The Danish poet Willum Peder Trellund died just before Christmas, last year. During his lifetime, he was largely ignored by the literary philistines of his own land. But shortly before his death, with the publication of a small book of love poems, Sange til Sandra (Songs to Sandra), he gained the respect of a new generation of poets. He was a complex person who carried his demons with him as well as his angel.
At a relatively early age, in his twenties, he tried to kill himself by putting his arms into a wood-cutting machine. He spent the rest of his forty or so years living out the consequences of that mad deed, with plastic arms. And yet his handwriting, in the ensuing years, was remarkably beautiful.
We bring two poems from Willum Peder Trellund’s as yet unpublished manuscript Forårets Høst (Spring Harvest), Katja, (in Danish),and In This Setting(in English). A third poem, The Double Demon is taken from an earlier collection. The two poems in English are excerpted from Fire and Ice, Nine Poets from Scandinavia and the North, published by Salmon Publishing in Ireland.
Den lysende hvide sky
som er en cirkel, en spiral
af fortættet liv,
- spiral: at alt
begynder igen, at igen
er alts begyndelse,
at ingen spiral
kan ende,
og ingen spiral kan ende
i andet end en ny
og fra evighedernes uendelighed
og fra uendelighedernes
evighed
hvirvler livet
og Gud
skjuler sig
mens han åbenbarer alt.
Og korset, det blodrøde kors,
som er to veje,
der mødes:
’opgivelse’ og ’hengivelse’
forenet
i kærlighed,
i et umuligt
møde,
der åbner for alt
og dér
i en brændende smerte
bliver næsten
og Gud ét.
The preceding poem is footnoted in WPT’s manuscript as follows:
Til Katja: digtet referer til to smykker givet til K. Det første - et spiralformet bensmykke symboliser AEOTE´ÁROA, den lange hvide skys land, dvs New Zealand. Det andet smykke – er et kors udskåret i koral.
Child
Light breathes
as spirit’s breath
lightens
days wile on
in flower dust.
Down silvery roads
a child is walking
and for a long time he is marvelling,
until the street opens onto
a portico
cool and green and very still.
There are broad lawns there
filling with sun.
Colossal grown-ups
tramp around
paths of crunching gravel.
The child nears
his discovery of the world
he streaks with confidence across
the lawns, tip-toes soundlessly
--unaware
the world he treads exists
is already
discovered
It opens
before his gaze,
the child laying
the world open
as a tiger
parting foliage.
Barbarously
he moves among thickets,
unaware
the path is somehow right,
is snug,
protected,
is among
the other animals and birds
Angels
follow him
wherever he goes.
trans GSW
In This Setting
In a setting of silver
and gliding eyelids
and lashes never flashing
sleep out of sight,
sleep that is this setting, gliding
silvery sleep.
and the dust on these photographs
of nothing
kissing nothing
--which is this silver scene gliding
as water itself will glide
on through.
No, there is a real presence here
as in the times I see
angels of silence, intimately present,
--the drizzling rain never ceasing to caress me
far into the fever--
and the angel
is still, very still
and it spreads very slowly opening wings
and in tremulous blaze
lofty in the hushed light
the angel stands
and it spreads very slowly opening wings
and in a storm
where silver-beaten fans open
into a seething mirror
the angel stands and it spreads very slowly
opening wings
and in a shower of words
intoning eons of silence
that transforms itself into light
the angel stands and it spreads very slowly
opening wings
and the light from the wings
spreads silence in the snow
falling softly as down does
from the wings of angels
spreading light
as on the first morning
and in the wings of angels
is the light’s tremor
and in the light’s tremor
the silver of silence
and in the storm of silence
the angels spread very slowly
their opening wings
and they embrace you
with a light
you do not understand
but one
that understands you
and the angels spread very slowly
their opening wings
and they embrace the heavens
and it is God who sings
as he has always sung creation
and the angels surround him
with a wall of
reticence, tenderness and intimate presence
and the angels become silent
until the appointed hour.
but through eons of silence
silence is walking
like the fall of an angel’s feather.
trans GSW
The Double Demon
Suddenly
the shape of his shadow
dividing on the wall behind--
each part moving
reft from the other
No dual source of light
nor play of flames flickering the wall
threw the joker’s shadow before me
there was only the standing lamp
naked and sober
nor was I rapturous, drunk
His shadow divided above me
lifting himself in supercilious disdain
a head of contempt, a jackal
cruel and ironic
twitching features
and the pleasure of a complacent
evil
caustic, sneering
in theatrical exactitude
--and down there, on the opposite side
dangling in a stooping gesture
the head of a child
languorous features
and an expression
devoid of spirit
as though it were
still-born
monstrous
yet through some devilish miracle
brought to life, though in torment
because of that life,
and all the while
in all that time
the face was speaking,
masked, deadened
empty, entranced, kept speaking
yet with someone else’s voice
inexorably hardened,
with words that
mocked.
I was filled with a cold
crystalline silence,
as though the coolness of observing
provided me somehow with a transparency
that was
invulnerable
as though I were
in my inmost self
crystallized
rock
I am no longer afraid
of the fury
darkness can bring about.
I am shielded. Now.
Initiated.
Into knowing
trans GSW