By Knud Sørensen
There is a sound — and it must be
what woke me up —
there is a sound
of quick heaving breaths
that are not ours
and it is morning now, and I look
— and it is the first time this morning
that my eyes see other than dreams —
I see
the sunlight strained
through the curtains’ tight
weave, and still I hear
these quick heaving breaths
that penetrate the house
together with the light particles,
and even before
I have decided to
I am over at the window
I pull the curtain aside
and it gets louder
the sound
and now I see it too,
a black wavy line
across the southern sky
that the sun still
is able to illuminate from below,
and the wave stretches almost
from the eastern and almost
to the western horizon.
I say behind me
“It’s thousands of Brent geese
flying north,”
and I also say
“like an ascending garland,”
but that’s not entirely accurate,
I must admit
when we are now two
at the window, there is
too much sideways movement,
too many changing peaks
and varying depths in the picture
up there. And suddenly
I see it:
of course, it’s an extended
and kindly rounded cardiogram
rising over the horizon
flapping its way across
the great bluish screen up there.
Now we can
hold hands.
“Look,” I say
“one more day
with a heart out there
beating as it should.”
By Knud Sørensen “Morgenens hjerte” ©2001
Translated by Michael Goldman
Not all Sørensen’s poetry is agricultural in theme. For example, this poem explores the tender relationship between ourselves and one another and how that can be reflected in our experience of nature.
