^{translated from the Danish by Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith}

Once:
a room
a typewriter
a job
an alarm clock
a loneliness
a hope.

Now:
an apartment
a summerhouse
things
a husband
three children
status
friend
lover
housekeeper
neglected
graves
hairdresser
psychiatrist
money
complication
lack of
joy.

Good things come
to those who wait
my mother said
longing and
understanding
came to her
too late.
She died in
the nursing home
knowing
no one.

People misunderstand
each other for
the most part.
She had
beautiful hands.
Unnoticed
life slipped away.

^{translated from the German by Samantha Rose Hill and Genese Grill}

Endure the abundance
when wave breaks upon wave,
refusing to appear,
to remain silent –­
O God, you do not hear us.

God’s voice does not save us
From the abundance.
He speaks only to the destitute,
those longing, those waiting.
O God, do not forget us.

Den Überfluss ertragen
wenn Well’ um Well’ sich bricht,
das Zeigen sich versagen,
im Schweigen zu verharren—
O Gott, Du hörst uns nicht.

Aus Überfluss errettet
uns Gottes Stimme nicht.
Sie spricht nur zu den Darbenden,
den Sehnsüchtigen, den Harrenden.
O Gott, vergiss uns nicht.

No, we are not going to die.

The sounds you hear

knocking the windows and chipping the paint

from the ceiling, that is a game

the world is playing.

Our task is to crouch in the dark as long as we can

and count the beats of our own hearts.

Good. Like that. Lay your hand

on my heart and I’ll lay mine on yours.

Which one of us wins

is the one who loves the game the most

while it lasts.

Yes, it is going to last.

You can use your ear instead of your hand.

Here, on my heart.

Why is it beating faster? For you. That’s all.

I always wanted you to be born

and so did the world.

No, those aren’t a stranger’s bootsteps in the house.

Yes, I’m here. We’re safe.

Remember chess? Remember

hide-and-seek?

The song your mother sang? Let’s sing that one.

She’s still with us, yes. But you have to sing

without making a sound. She’d like that.

No, those aren’t bootsteps.

Sing. Sing louder.

Those aren’t bootsteps.

Let me show you how I cried when you were born.

Those aren’t bootsteps.

Those aren’t sirens.

Those aren’t flames.

Close your eyes. Like chess. Like hide-and-seek.

When the game is done you get another life.

was no consolation to the woman
whose husband was strung out on opioids.

Gone to a better place: useless and suspect intel
for the couple at their daughter’s funeral

though there are better places to be
than a freezing church in February, standing

before a casket with a princess motif. 
Some moments can’t be eased

and it’s no good offering clichés like stale
meat to a tiger with a taste for human suffering.

When I hear the word miracle I want to throw up
on a platter of deviled eggs. Everything happens

for a reason: more good tidings someone will try
to trepan your skull to insert. When fire

inhales your house, you don’t care what the haiku says
about seeing the rising moon. You want

an avalanche to bury you. You want to lie down
under a slab of snow, dumb as a jarred

sideshow embryo. What a circus.
The tents dismantled, the train moving on,

always moving, starting slow and gaining speed,
taking you where you never wanted to go.

That bastard sun rises again, dissolving
the only good dream I’ve had all year.

My waking mind feels for hope, blind
reach for eyeglasses on the nightstand

or an oxygen regulator fallen
from my mouth to the ocean floor.

Across town, my friend can’t lift her head
off her pillow, the chemo eating her

platelets and maybe the tumor, while
in my kitchen, the coffee timer clicks on,

French Roast draining into the carafe.
On the news, a Somali mother searches

tree bark for emaciated insects: You see,
even the bugs are starving. Dear world,

what good can you offer? The finches’ 
red-breasted tune, these strawberries

grown fat around dimpled gold seeds?
My son, she brushes dust from his lips,

he keeps asking for a donut. Just a nibble
of a donut. I don’t know what to say.

we are in an ark
 

not a passport in hand
 

    tinted windows and air the taste of spit  

and body oils     the pregnant woman

squeezes her abdomen     the child will not  die

in the middle of a journey   too weak   to jump  

into the sharks     no emissary in sight   we want to sing

can barely clap     a groan rises from our ribs  broken

we lick the sweat     from each other’s sweat  the mother chews

on her placenta  she wants to share  but  we allow her greed

we laugh  the wind    responds     

we pray  into    our mouths  only the breath    in God  in us

makes music    of our meditations  we mark the distance

from  our mother’s     nipples with these    fragile fingernails

what we see     in each other’s spirits  is fear    I must have

two left    the Liverpool rocks roll like they fell from an archangel’s

vineyard    what praise can we give    with bound hands

they still     out talk      with a reason    of existence

in pairs     they drag us     out like animals

    to Fernand Léger

I died in loneliness
for no one cared for me enough
to become a woman for them
that was not my only thought
and with a woman
she wanted another one

I died in loneliness
of that I am not afraid
but that I am a clank
upon the gutter, a new guard at twilight
without a dream of adolescence
frustration plucked as strong

I died in loneliness
without friends or money
they were taken off
long ago, a melodrama
sounded out my name, the glass key of a
torch song on Father’s Day

I died in loneliness
away from the beach and speeding cars
back seat in love with Bunny
on the way to Howard Johnson’s
beyond the blue horizon
hunting for a lost popular tune.

When the grizzly cubs were caught, collared, and taken away—
relocated they call it—
their mother ran back and forth on the road screaming.
Brutal sound. Torn from her lungs. Her heart,
twisted knot, hot blood rivering
to the twenty-six pounding bones of her feet.
Just weeks before
I watched a bear and her cubs run down a mountain
in the twilight.
So buoyant, they seemed to be tumbling
to the meadow,
to the yarrow root they dug, rocking
to wrest it from the hard ground, fattening for winter.
They were breathing what looked like gladness.
But that other mother . . .
Her massive head raised, desperate to catch their scent.
Each footfall a fracture in the earth’s crust.

I've been fighting a War Within Myself all my life,
Tired of the hurt, the pain, the strife.
Anger consumes me from day to day,
Cellies now walking on eggshells, unsure of what to say.
I do pray each night for the peace that I need in my heart,
I need it before I tear what friendships I have apart.
Prison has a funny way of doing some things,
Leaves me wondering what tomorrow may bring.
I'm tired of the hate, anger and pain that I feel,
I just want my heart and soul to be healed.
I want to be able to simply laugh at a joke,
I need someone to help me before I lose all hope.
My heart is almost completely hardened with what I've been through,
I need someone, anyone, maybe that someone is you.
I'm fighting a War Within Myself, and I'm so tired,
So nervous, scared, like I'm on a high tight wire.
I hope that I don't fall before someone catches me,
But then again... maybe it's my destiny.

The grim dawn lightens thin bleak clouds;
In the hill clefts beyond the flooded meadows
Lies death-pale, death-still mist.

We trudge along wearily,
Heavy with lack of sleep,
Spiritless, yet with pretence of gaiety.

The sun brings crimson to the colourless sky;
Light gleams from brass and steel—
We trudge on wearily—

O God, end this bleak anguish
Soon, soon, with vivid crimson death,
End it in mist-pale sleep!