Excerpts from
Freebooter Dreams
By Tom Kristensen
The Land Called Atlantis
A Symbol
The world has become chaotic anew.
Once more rousing voices intone mighty song.
Begone, Syscophants! And begone, Parasites!
Begone all you who kneel to the throng!
And the sugary tenor grows silent, -
Hear what the activist sings!
Hoarse is his voice. Explosively red
his lips are flamed within beard-blackened borders.
Hear his loud call for the land of Atlantis,
for youth and for power and for no giving way,
crying it´s but through the land of Atlantis
that beauty´s fair realm can be ours.
Superb like a war-shattered station are
our youth and our strength and our wild ideas,
bright like a pistol´s ice-green star
born in an instant with splitting pang
on the panes of the revolution´s
strident glass-chinking cafés.
Red the compartment´s lacerated plush,
waving like pennants on raging excursions.
Postman´s jackets are good as banners.
And lackeys´ greatcoats are weighty standards,
unfolding bloody in the wind.
Good luck to our banner bastards!
The fight must be won with a rusty gun,
with curtain rods, daggers, cobbles in piles.
Our victory shall be hailed with strident fanfares
on tin gramophones and milkman´s bells,
and trumpets of brass shall be heard
slushily calling and tempting.
The land called Atlantis towards which we long,
has bright stacks of rifles adorning the streets.
Bonfires all flicker for the alleyway´s soldiers
hungrily leaning against the walls
and rapaciously grabbing at each scrap of food
they can extract from tin cans.
The streets are deserted, the wind harshly howls
making flutes of the keyholes and spectrally
whining the skeletal waltzes
so festively danced on the ruins of houses,
while shattered panes from their windows
all grin like ironical skulls.
Restless the bonfires impart a deep glow
of flame and of blood to houses and shacks.
Tin cans flicker with lids twisted open,
and the wind plasters newspaper sheets to the walls.
A knife´s being sharpened for ready
on tramlines´ steel-gleaming furrows.
Thus is the land of our longing, Atlantis,
where every harmonious prejudice fails.
Colours are ruptured and forms burst asunder,
and beauty is built upon ruthless contention.
In chaos I raise up my gun
towards beauty´s bright star and aim.
Translated by W. Glyn Jones
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