Tag: 2023 – 2024

Colors your eye cannot see

~ windinmywheels ~ 4 Comments
.

JUST BEFORE SPRING

There in the freezing morning
hangs a sound that soon will thaw.
The quiet is almost ripe,
opening like a seed.

In this air there are colors
your eye cannot see.
They wait like depths in the expanse
over the blind snow.

Quiet. Don’t speak yet.
Don’t start anything.
One more drop of silence
and the air will be full of song.

LIGE FOR FORÅR

Der står i den frysende morgen
en tone der snart vil to.
Om lidt er stilheden moden
og åbner sig som et frø.

I denne lift er der farver
dot øje ikke kan se.
De venter som dybder i rummet
over den blinde sne.

Stille. Vent med at tale.
Sæt ikke noget i gang.
En dråbe stilhed mere
og luften er fuld af sang.

Benny Andersen
from
Something To Live Up To
Selected Poems
translated from Danish by
Michael Goldman

New Year’s Eve. At 4pm the streets of Edinburgh are already thronged with tens of thousands come to bid goodbye to an old year, and welcome to the new. For many, tonight will be a poignant celebration of hope, of longing, and yes, of myriad forms of prayer.

Can we dare to hope for something new?

To my great joy I’ve been introduced, towards the end of 2023, to the writings of the late and much revered Danish poet, Benny Andersen. I hope to walk with him awhile in 2024 – and in his Just Before Spring lies an apposite message for an upcoming new year …

I denne lift er der farver
dot øje ikke kan se.

In this air there are colors
your eye cannot see.

In the chill night air of this and other cities around the world, amid ‘Auld lang syne’ and fireworks, hugs and hopes, kisses and wishes, the poet suggests that we have not yet seen all the beauty that remains to be seen. Something glorious and hope-filled, something reconciling and restorative, something just the other side of snowy silence, something even now ‘opening like a seed,’ lies before us – and we may play a quiet part in bringing a new flowering, a new singing, into the night, and into the light. ‘One more drop of silence and the air will be full of song.’

.

archive – a list of all earlier posts

HOME

Out of darkness

~ windinmywheels ~ 6 Comments
.

I am not alone. Many of us encounter a touch of melancholy towards the close of another year. We feel ourselves getting older. We wonder whether we’re any wiser. We try to take stock of what good we hope we, personally, have brought into the world, and of all we’d really rather not have brought. We begin to shape ‘new’ resolutions. We try – and sometimes fail – to voice our hopes and aspirations.

Beyond the taking stock, though, there’s a degree of melancholy, of sadness, that we can’t exactly explain. And then there are the more obvious causes for sadness, even despair for many. These don’t need explaining – words only ever seem to perpetuate them. We simply long, in every atom of our being, for them to end, for restoration of peace, for healing – though we cannot begin to imagine how healing can be brought to some of the shattered, bereaved and broken lives in our thoughts at the end of 2023.

So where do we turn when words fail as we look towards 2024? Upon what may we rest our gaze? What might we hear of comfort, of promise, when – disorientated and distressed – we cannot bear to look upon ‘The News’ (and feel profoundly uneasy about that), and are deeply concerned that almost anything we might contribute to the universal human conversation is fraught with the danger of being too glib, too ignorant, too ill-advised, too trite, too utterly unnecessary, too plain wrong?

Well, not for the first time, I cannot answer my own questions – but am aware, nonetheless, of a promise that lies buried in dark earth at this year’s end. Delicate snowdrops will find strength to push on upwards towards the light. Daffodils will grace gardens, fields, roadsides and windowsills when Spring comes. Courage in brave children, women and men will inspire us to restart and start again. And again. And again.

All of us – snowdrops, daffodils and humankind – must learn how to live, and to communicate, and to thrive, in the new, ever-changing and – for some – alien and unwanted environments in which we find ourselves. We will do well to speak with tenderness, out of thoughtful consideration and reflection, and to listen more carefully, to the voices of the severely oppressed, of refugees, and of the young – many of them crying and pleading from the heart.

We will be mindful of the hidden strength in much that we have thought delicate. And we must hope with all our best might and main that every effort at perseverance, at bravely pushing up through darkness towards tomorrow’s light, will make for a better world – for happier, wiser, new years.

.

.

archive – a list of all earlier posts

HOME