Translation from the Danish by Susanna Nied
—
you say the kitchen doesn’t fit me it’s too little so am I too big too demanding my soul hangs out the window, staring my hand scrubs out a cup my eye weeps but isn’t that with joy can you imagine you say licking the city what if it were a sugar sculpture we could keep in our pockets suck on when we were alone I have such a crush on it you say I love it so much well, take off your apron now, champagne girl, and become a peacock, a fountain! we’re going to a hotel the kitchen’s a disaster where are the red shoes a peach, split and fragrantly moist don’t dawdle you have to remember to smile a lot you say never go out with unwashed hair don’t arrive at a simple dinner overdressed it looks so cheap my soul is nowhere to be seen the window slams a strange sinking feeling in my body is anything missing I remember a woman tall as a house her dark skin wrapped in swansdown I remember a boy someone abandoned at the station the legs she had ebony rubbed shiny with oil his gaze black with terror someone ran up the stairs someone left him someone saw their chance you always mix up nightmares with truth you should read more metaphysical junk you say then you’d learn to tell the difference there is only earth and sky earth and sky don’t hold me so tight tread gently now we’re walking my legs are walking my eye registers gray sky my eye registers my soul it turns the corner it absolutely sparkles heavy as a sack I hang from your pocket I’ve turned into earth I’ve turned into meat into heavy metals into stone look, I say look my soul has left me it absolutely sparkles no you say that’s the city kissably frosted I’m having a great time you say I’m on top of the world you say I fall down I lie in an alley I’ve lost a shoe do you remember a peach, a cup, a slamming window do you remember do you remember anything is it a dream
—
one day it was Monday you hid behind the door then you jumped out like a devil onto my back; you grabbed me by the throat I’m going to choke you but that’s past tense; I’m still alive it would take more than that a walk over broken glass shimmering sunshine joy a voyage on a red ship: there it is! Søndre Strømfjord! here we watch muskoxen try to storm the hotel here we get stranded, waiting for good weather here we drink soda pop in the snow we’re moving home but home is here or no you wouldn’t let go I carried you all the way through downtown are we hurting the children will they survive you said and your voice so gentle so gentle but then too it started to rain we got a drink at Union Square you even bought me lilies now you wanted to walk on your own but are you a child or an adult are you horrible we learned our way around that Monday museums closed, cheap purses for sale in the street and before we can turn around the past becomes the present another day it’s Thursday teeming with bugs now we’re drinking iced tea and neither of us is gentle we float off in thought and leave behind the bitter bodies they absolutely despise each other today Thursday I think about who you are but have no clue I’m homesick for Rome that I know all of Europe has become my home when someone speaks French on the street, I understand it’s a joy that brings tears to my eyes I cry over words les enfant die Kinder Oh, children, you did a great job now you’re pinching my hand you’re kicking the table we wonder if we should poison the ants and in that way become murderers and we use little birds for target practice; we’re little birds ourselves now your hand has slid up around my neck broken glass grows from the ground I cut myself I’m going to choke you but as I said long ago: it will take more than that much more or a car hitting head-on and throwing me high into the air
—
a sudden fear of coming home like meeting up with a sect one has left and what if one can’t hold out against them I cook a Danish dish and my sorrow sinks into the cream it’s so contradictory there are so many layers now the phone rings now I say Sorry? in English then What did you say? in Danish but in dreams the new language sneaks around and pushes at meanings tiny words secrets that only the initiated understand yet the freedom fluttering like a blade of grass in a storm I am carried along over prairie and plain and highland and sea deep into the earth where sprouting seeds and crawling creatures have their ways look there I say look I’ve never seen that before I say: my fear surprises me I say: now I understand
—
one of my great-great-grandfather’s uncles was hurt in a combine (Avernak Island) he jumped into his boat rowed all the way to the mainland the doctor’s house (patrician villa) here uncle knocks here the doctor answers the door (solid oak) the doctor says: I never seen a man with his ass in his pocket before then he sewed it back on that’s how the story goes a woman sat in a settlement (Igdlorssuit, Arctic winter) she lost a tooth no dentist’s door to knock on but Crazy Glue (the kind you can lift a car with) so she glued it back in that’s how the story goes and there are rules for how not to disturb the dead person’s spirit as it treks over the mountains to its appointed place the women’s punishment was especially heavy if they (taboo:) emptied the urine bucket outside the house before the spirit arrived at its destination combed their hair at a window looked at the ocean, the sky talked, smiled, laughed Peter von Scholten’s mistress, Anna H., mulatto, held salons in her white husband’s house in her snow white dress in the warm evenings here voices were raised in song here mangos were served, and sweet wines the women in Togo too were punished most heavily for infractions related to wandering spirits and listen (in the heat, in the cold night): someone raises the alarm someone shouts: mitaartoq! someone shouts: zángbeto! but it’s people dressed as ghosts creeping up to scare the life out of little children in Greenland in Africa my mother’s sister died at four years old in nineteen forty-four, June, these bills were paid: 1 Funeral Bouquet, 75¢ One Coffin, Delivered $14.00 One Set of Burial Clothing, $1.60 For the Funeral of the Deceased Child Delivery of a Child’s Headstone with Inscription/ and a Dove $9.60 L. Brentegani, Søllerød Stonecutters maybe my grandfather on his bicycle before blackout curfew, making the rounds to the creditors (coins and bills in his worn wallet) maybe my grandmother bent over my mother maybe her spirit apart from her body holding this child’s body, sorrowing, seeking another child’s spirit Anna H., mulatto, Peter S., white, here they campaign for abolition; here slavery is abolished, here he goes home to his Danish wife fifty-six kilometers south of Upernavik in nineteen fifty-five a boy was buried but no tools could dig through the permafrost the cairn built of flat stones driftwood reindeer antlers look: a monument on the mountainside taboo: never go back to that place, or you’ll be haunted forever but the dogs find a rich repast since a corpse since meat stays fresh for quite a while in the cold Clothing the deceased $1.40 1 Coffin Cushion $4.40 and before that: Children’s Ward (TB), Visiting Hours: Sundays and Holidays 11-12 and before that: a blond child with a ribbon and before that: Uncle in a rowboat with a bloody pocket Peter von Scholten’s Anna astride his blissful private parts (very hot night) a tooth hitting a plank floor a midwife making her entrance in sealskin clothes with a raised whip: HAVE the BABY, woman! then it was my turn to be born with approximately two and a half million eggs in the bargain and so on and on to now where sun and wind sweep over a garden (O apple groves, O meadows green, we love thy verdant vales) where the light is a rain of silver ducats in the tulip tree and my children play with a stick they dig a grave for their little brother because they’d dearly love to be rid of him
—
you should do more yoga you say don’t tense up your jaw don’t grind your teeth don’t have more children than you can provide for I turn my face upward a crack in the ceiling stretches all the way from Denmark to New York butterflies, rapeseed fields, chicory, violets I wake up but think I’m asleep each place is a bounded space you say colors are just a product of our biology the sun consists of air I bend forward I walk out into the hallway two buttons missing from a green coat in the street: a tableau of silence but is it morning loss is the beginning of something new you say I press my fingers against my eyes I sit down on a stool an alley is a space between rows of houses a house is space bounded by walls a house is a home you read aloud from a book I go to sleep but think I’m awake cold air from the crack under the door a damp bed tenements stank of sewage during the Depression no child was safe in the streets; nothing was safe the pendulum swings and stops, points due west now people are flocking again to the soup kitchen on Fourth Street with daughters whose hair comes down to their knees whose eyes gleam like black pearls whose smiles are hot embraces a lot of immigrants live on fish from the river you say a lot of immigrants gather mushrooms in the park go on, make a living what are you waiting for? I dreamed of my great-grandmother I say she was standing by her easel she wore her wooden leg with grace today, a man in the park with a turban so bright Jewish boys play baseball in suits and high hats I say was it today? the earth’s core is the epitome of hell you say hell do you understand? oh, yes I say believe me, I understand think of the stars’ time scale think of the Ice Ages of bracken of the stiffened bodies’ imprints in the ashes in Pompeii I say you read aloud from a book you’ve reached the last letter of the alphabet I lie in a fetal position on a mat I walk to the grocery store in snakeskin shoes I sit down on a stool I plunge my head into a bucket of water get up breathe on the windowpane think of my sex I say: now we’re playing statues aha, you say the last letter of the Danish alphabet — å — wasn’t official until nineteen forty-two a man named Rasmus Rask proposed it when the first Danish Language Council met in eighteen twenty it wasn’t approved the sun consists of very hot air you say twenty million degrees centigrade at the core Rasmus Rask I say sounds like a cartoon character you roll your eyes, exasperated you snap the book shut I lift up my dress to show you my bellybutton a socket with no connections a vestige of the past in the center of my body I flip through a notebook I write: hole in belly I write: is it morning now? I write bracken, buttons, hunger
—
Notes on the Texts:
Mitaartoq (Greenlandic) — Costumed man who appears unexpectedly in the dark, often around New Year, to frighten people; Greenland.
Zangbéto (Mina) — Costumed man, self-appointed night watchman with magical powers; Togo, West Africa.
Peter von Scholten — 1784-1854) Governor-General of the Danish West Indies, 1827-1848. He championed the rights of West Indian slaves and other people of color and ultimately ranted universal emancipation. He was recalled to Denmark to stand trial.
Anna H. — Anna Heegaard (1790-1859), a mixed-race native of the Danish West Indies who attained social prominence and became Peter von Scholten’s mistress. She advised him on discrimination issues and played a key role in the emancipation campaign.
—
Originally from Greenland, Naja Marie Aidt is a Danish poet and author with nearly 20 works in various genres to her name. She has received numerous honors, including the Nordic nations’ most prestigious literary prize, the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize, in 2008 for Baboon, and her work has been translated into several languages. Her work has also been anthologized in the Best European Fiction series and has appeared in leading American journals of translation. Baboon was published in the states by Two Lines Press in 2014.
—
Susanna Nied is an American writer and translator who thinks Danish is the most beautiful language on earth. Twice named as a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, she has received the Landon Translation Prize of the Academy of American Poets, the PEN/American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize, and the Nims Memorial Translation Prize of Poetry magazine.
