Inger Christensen

1935-2009, Dinamarca

Nicola Samori (1977- ) In principio era la fine

Transl. Susanna Nied

Alphabet (12, II)

cobalt bombs exist
wrapped in their cloaks
of cobalt-60 isotopes

whose half-life
ensures the most
harmful effects

there’s no more to
say; we ensure that
the harm is as great
as it can he; there’s no
more to say; we

ensure ourselves all or
nothing; there’s no
more to say; by
ensuring that all
can be turned into

nothing, we
lose the capacity to
think of nothing,
of not a thing
in the world as we

say, when we simply
are being; there’s
no more to
say; we
ensure

that it’s all erased,
obliterated,
so the first
the crucial
nothing gets no chance
to make the poetry
that wind can make
in air or water;

there’s no more
to say; we kill
more than we think
more than we know
more than we feel;
there’s no more
to say; we hate;
there is no more;

like a regal bird
in its coffin of silt
in mud like a worm,
like a hawk
the storm has broken
like a grey parrot
dragged onto a steamboat
from someone’s plantation

I’ll live from now on
half-smothered, stuffed down
no one special among
all the traffic-worn doves
in whose last
clutch of feathers the hopeless
cloud cover of peace
makes the human eye

plummet; that’s how I’ll live;
with my own little fine
half-life deep in
my heart; that’s how I’ll die,
I have said to myself
I will die, said it with
thanks for sorrow,
oblivion, done; said
to myself: think like
a bird building nests,
think like a cloud, like
the roots of the dwarf birch

think; like a leaf on a tree
thinks; like shadow and light,
like shining bark thinks,
like the grubs beneath
the barkskin think, like lichen
on a stone and a bit of dry rot
think, like the squawroot thinks,
like this misty forest clearing
thinks, like the marshes think
where the rising of the rainbow
is reflected, think like a bit of
mud, a bit of raindrop
thinks, think like a mirror

so vitally — see
on its throne of nothing
the sandstorm’s vortex;
see how banally enclosed
in the least small grain of
sand an ingenious
fossilised life rests up
from the trip; just see
how calmly it bears
the primal sea’s swarm
of beginnings; just see
how simple a sign
in which like a substance

the truth is reflected;
just see how
truly, graciously; let
things be; add
words, hut let
things be; see
how easily they find
shelter by themselves
behind a stone; see
how easily they steal
into your ear
and whisper
to death to go away