3 poems
SHINING TRAIN
The party is a shining train that thunders past us in the night
while winter darkness walks its children to work
You give your infant dreams powder milk from a pippette
on Prince Henrik’s birthday, little Danish flags in the dog poop
Can you hear it too? The hunters shoot the animals
in the forest, afterwards they cry in shame, you don’t speak
much but your heart glows like phosphor, actually
the interview went quite well, think red and yellow balloons
the National Guard, free lemonade, growth rings
of work and leisure that tighten their grip around the neck
IVY (FOR SAMMY)
The thin layer of snow on the road, the ultraviolet tinge
cars drive slowly by the movie theater as in a funeral procession
At the subatomic level, time and place cease to be relevant
the crazy scientist explains to the superhero Antman
it’s exactly the opposite in the world of migrants, I realize
The deeper you fall through society, the stronger time and place feel
like that early morning it rained and rained in Naples
Sammy and I lined our soaked shoes with plastic bags, continued
trudging along the ring road like cartoon vagabonds
We wait apathetically for green light in the empty street crossings
the stars move at great speed across the moonless sky
a sudden tear of wild happiness, the dirty foam on the lakes
Funny, you know, there’s ivy growing through the window frame
in my office at the university, it seems so threatening
so foreboding, right? Seriously, you’ve been gone a long time, honey
MANCHURIA
The labyrinth lies down on the psychologist’s couch, ready to open up
If all the cell phones in the world ring at the same time
then there’s a staircase in the metro that leads to no place in particular
I’m thinking of an elongated skull, it’s not my own or is it?
Feel like a badly faded jigsaw puzzle someone has given up assembling
nevertheless, the days run together like rye bread mix, and you? How are you?
As long as the last tiger in Manchuria has its own star in the sky
and a bitter wind sweeps across the campus lawn and empties our pockets
the drama of the day fizzles out, the ending has been seen so
many times before, yet the kiss in the copy room still burns on my lips
Hans Lucht is a writer and anthropologist working in Danish and English. His ethnography, Darkness before Daybreak was awarded the 2012 Elliott P. Skinner Book Award from the Association for Africanist Anthropology. Lucht has received writing grants from the Danish Arts Council and the Danish Arts Foundation. The poems belong to a larger work titled SHINING TRAIN. The poems SHINING TRAIN and IVY (FOR SAMMY) first appeared in Danish in Slagtryk.