Contents
1 [a] apricot trees
2 [b] bracken
3 [c] cicadas
4 [d] doves
5 [e] early fall
6 [f] fisherbird herons
7 [g] given limits
8 [h] whisperings
9 [i] ice ages
10 [j] June nights
atom bombs
11 [k] love
somewhere
fragment
hydrogen bombs
12 [l] life
in mid-November
snow
don’t panic
from a train
cobalt bombs
13 [m] metal
layered light
as if
it’s new for me
following the sleepwalkers
defoliants
alphabets
14 [n] nights
so here I stand
the Gävle canal
there’s something specific
dreamers
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
The length of each section of Inger Christensen’s
alphabet is based on Fibonacci’s sequence,
a mathematical sequence beginning 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8,
13, 21…, in which each number is the sum of
the two previous numbers.
1
apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist
2
bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;
bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen
3
cicadas exist; chicory, chromium,
citrus trees; cicadas exist;
cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cerebellum
4
doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;
killers exist, and doves, and doves;
haze, dioxin, and days; days
exist, days and death; and poems
exist; poems, days, death
5
early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought;
seclusion and angels exist;
widows and elk exist; every
detail exists; memory, memory’s light;
afterglow exists; oaks, elms,
junipers, sameness, loneliness exist;
eider ducks, spiders, and vinegar
exist, and the future, the future
6
fisherbird herons exist, with their grey-blue arching
backs, with their black-feathered crests and their
bright-feathered tails they exist; in colonies
they exist, in the so-called Old World;
fish, too, exist, and ospreys, ptarmigans,
falcons, sweetgrass, and the fleeces of sheep;
fig trees and the products of fission exist;
errors exist, instrumental, systemic,
random; remote control exists, and birds;
and fruit trees exist, fruit there in the orchard where
apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist
in countries whose warmth will call forth the exact
colour of apricots in the flesh
7
given limits exist, streets, oblivion
and grass and gourds and goats and gorse,
eagerness exists, given limits
branches exist, wind lifting them exists,
and the lone drawing made by the branches
of the tree called an oak tree exists,
of the tree called an ash tree, a birch tree,
a cedar tree, the drawing repeated
in the gravel garden path; weeping
exists as well, fireweed and mugwort,
hostages, greylag geese, greylags and their young;
and guns exist, an enigmatic back yard;
overgrown, sere, gemmed just with red currants,
guns exist; in the midst of the lit-up
chemical ghetto guns exist
with their old-fashioned, peaceable precision
guns and wailing women, full as
greedy owls exist; the scene of the crime exists;
the scene of the crime, drowsy, normal, abstract,
bathed in a whitewashed, godforsaken light,
this poisonous, white, crumbling poem
8
whisperings exist, whisperings exist
harvest, history, and Hailey‘s
comet exist; hosts exist, hordes
high commanders, hollows, and within the hollows
half-shadows, within the half-shadows occasional
hares, occasional hanging leaves shading the hollow where
bracken exists, and blackberries, blackberries
occasional hares hidden under the leaves
and gardens exist, horticulture, the elder tree’s
pale flowers, still as a seething hymn;
the half-moon exists, half-silk, and the whole
heliocentric haze that has dreamed
these devoted brains, their luck, and human skin
human skin and houses exist, with Hades
rehousing the horse and the dog and the shadows
of glory, hope; and the river of vengeance;
hail under stoneskies exists, the hydrangeas’ white, bright-shining, blue or greenish
fogs of sleep, occasionally pink, a few
sterile patches exist, and beneath
the angled Armageddon of the arching heavens, poison,
the poison helicopter’s humming harps above the henbane,
shepherd’s purse, and flax, henbane, shepherd’s purse
and flax; this last, hermetic writing,
written otherwise only by children; and wheat,
wheat in wheatfields exists, the head-spinning horizontal knowledge of wheatfields, half-lives,
famine, and honey; and deepest in the heart,
otherwise as ever only deepest in the heart,
the roots of the hazel, the hazel that stands
on the hillslope of the heart, tough and hardy,
an accumulated weekday of Angelic orders;
high-speed, hyacinthic in its decay, life,
on earth as it is in heaven
9
ice ages exist, ice ages exist,
ice of polar seas, kingfishers’ ice;
cicadas exist, chicory, chromium
and chrome yellow irises, or blue; oxygen
especially; ice floes of polar seas also exist,
and polar bears, stamped like furs with their
identification numbers, condemned to their lives;
the kingfisher’s miniplunge into blue-frozen
March streams exists, if streams exist;
if oxygen in streams exists, especially
oxygen, especially where cicadas’
i-sounds exist, especially where
the chicory sky, like bluing dissolving in
water, exists, the chrome yellow sun, especially
oxygen, indeed it will exist, indeed
we will exist, the oxygen we inhale will exist,
lacewings, lantanas will exist, the lake’s
innermost depths like a sky; a cove ringed
with rushes, an ibis will exist,
the motions of mind blown into the clouds
like eddies of oxygen deep in the Styx
and deep in the landscapes of wisdom, ice-light,
ice and identical light, and deep
in the ice-light nothing, lifelike, intense
as your gaze in the rain; this incessant,
life-stylising drizzle, in which like a gesture
fourteen crystal forms exist, seven
systems of crystals, your gaze as in mine,
and Icarus, Icarus helpless;
Icarus wrapped in the melting wax
wings exists
, Icarus pale as a corpse
in street clothes, Icarus deepest down where
doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;
the dreamers, their hair with detached
tufts of cancer, the skin of the dolls tacked together
with pins, the dryrot of riddles; and smiles,
Icarus-children white as lambs
in greylight, indeed they will exist, indeed
we will exist, with oxygen on its crucifix,
as rime we will exist, as wind,
as the iris of the rainbow in the iceplant’s gleaming
growths, the dry tundra grasses, as small beings
we will exist, small as pollen bits in peat,
as virus bits in bones, as water-thyme perhaps,
perhaps as white clover, as vetch, wild chamomile,
banished to a re-lost paradise; but the darkness
is white, say the children, the paradise-darkness is white,
but not white the same way that coffins
are white, if coffins exist, and not white
the same way that milk is white, if milk exists;
white, it is white, say the children,
the darkness is white, but not
white like the white that existed
when fruit trees existed, their blossoms so white,
this darkness is whiter; eyes melt
10
June nights exist, June nights exist,
the sky at long last as if lifted to heavenly
heights, simultaneously sinking, as tenderly as
when dreams can be seen before they are dreamed; a space
as if dizzied, as if filled with whiteness, an hourless
chiming of insects and dew, and no one in
this gossamer summer, no one comprehends that
just these reeling sets of restless ultrasounds
exist, the bat’s ears of jade
turned toward the ticking haze;
never has the tilting of the planet been so pleasant,
never the zinc-white nights so white,
so defencelessly dissolved, gently ionized and
white, never the limit of invisibility so nearly
touched; June, June, your Jacob’s ladders,
your sleeping creatures and their dreams exist,
a drift of galactic seed between
earth so earthly and sky so heavenly,
the vale of tears so still, so still, and tears
sinking, sinking like groundwater back
into earth; Earth; Earth in its trajectory
around the sun exists, Earth on its journey
along the Milky Way, Earth on its course with
its cargo of jasmine, jasper, iron,
iron curtains, omens, jubilation, Judas’s kiss
kissed right and left, and virgin anger in
the streets, Jesus of salt; with the shadow of the
jacaranda over the river, with gyrfalcons, jet planes,
and January in the heart, with Jacopo della Quercia’s
well Fonte Gaia in Siena and with July
heavy as a bomb, with domestic brains
heart defects, quaking grass and strawberries
the ironwood‘s roots in the earthworn earth
Earth sung by Jayadeva in his mystical
poem from the 12th century, Earth with
the coastline of consciousness blue, with nests where
fisherbird herons exist, with their grey-blue arching
backs, or where bitterns exist, cryptic
and shy, or night herons, egrets,
with the wingbeat variations of hedge sparrows, cranes
and doves; Earth exists with Jullundur, Jabalpur and
the Jungfrau, with Jotunheim, the Jura,
with Jahrun, Jambo, Jogjakarta,
with duststorms, Dutchman’s breeches
with water and land masses jolted by tremors
with Judenburg, Johannesburg, Jerusalem’s Jerusalem
atom bombs exist
Hiroshima, Nagasaki
Hiroshima, August
6th, 1945
Nagasaki, August
9th, 1945
140,000 dead and
wounded in Hiroshima
some 60,000 dead and
wounded in Nagasaki
numbers standing still
somewhere in a distant
ordinary summer
since then the wounded
have died, first many,
most, then fewer, but
all; finally
the children of the wounded
stillborn, dying
many, forever a
few, at last the
last; I stand in
my kitchen peeling
potatoes; the tap
runs, almost
drowning out the
children in the yard;
the children shout,
almost drowning out
the birds in the
trees; the birds
sing, almost
drowning out the whisper
of leaves in the wind;
the leaves whisper,
almost drowning
the sky with silence,
the sky with its light
and the light that almost
since then has recalled
atomic fire
a bit
11
love exists, love exists
your hand a baby bird so obliviously tucked
into mine, and death impossible to remember,
impossible to remember how inalienable
life, as easily as chemicals drifting
over the knotgrass and rock doves, all of it
is lost, vanishing, impossible to remember that
there and there flocks of rootless
people, livestock, dogs exist, are vanishing;
tomatoes, olives vanishing, the brownish
women who harvest them, withering, vanishing,
while the ground is dusty with sickness, a powder
of berries and leaves, and the buds of the caper
are never gathered, pickled with salt
and eaten; but before they vanish, before we vanish, one evening we sit at the table with
a little bread, a few fish without cankers, and water
history’s thousands of war paths suddenly
crosses the living room, you get up, limits,
given limits exist, streets, oblivion
everywhere, but your hideout comes no nearer
see the moon is too brightly lit and Charles’s Wain
is going hack empty as it came; the dead want
to be carried, the sick want to be carried, the broken
pale soldiers looking like Narcissus want to
be carried; you wander around in such a strangely
endless way; only when they die do you stop
in a kale patch no one has tended for several
centuries, follow the sound of a dried-up
spring, somewhere in Karelia maybe, and as
you think of words like chromosomes and chimeras
and the aborted growth of lychees, fruits of love,
you peel off some tree bark and eat it
somewhere I am suddenly born
in an expressionless house; when you
cry out the walls give way and
the garden, in which you vanish, is
worn smooth by slugs; you bathe
jerking like a bird, and when the earth
is eaten and the rhubarb first
dries up, summer gives way and
the town, in which you vanish, is
slow and black; you walk in
the streets, do as others do,
wordlessly in passing nudge
bits of brick into place; when the route
is tenacious, ingrained eno
ugh, the houses
give way, and the high plain spreads,
sullen, almighty, and almost
invisible; somewhere a wild
apricot tree stands still for a moment
and blooms, but just with a very
thin veil on the outspread branches
before going on regardless
fragment of a springtime, the kind
of evening when the roads lead almost
off into the blue, but no one
moves; the dust of the roads recalls
the dust of the roads where most
are shot and the silence
tugs at stones, but nothing happens
somewhere something no one has
touched tumbles from a shelf,
perhaps as my grandmother stands
as she always has stood in her
kitchen and cooks up dried apricots;
I know she is dead, but their scent
is so strong that the body sensing it
it becomes fruit itself; and as
the fruit is hung up in the nearest
tree, which may be a birch that
hears catkins, never apricots,
the shot sounds beforehand, ahead
of just after, its sound like a
door with no house standing wide open still
hydrogen bombs exist
a plea to die
as people used to die
one day in ordinary
weather, whether you
know you are dying
or know nothing, maybe
a day when as usual you have
forgotten you must die,
a breezy day in
November maybe, as
you walk into the kitchen
and barely manage to
notice how good
and earthy the potatoes
smell, and barely
manage to put the lid on,
wondering whether you
salted them before you
put the lid on,
and in a flash,
while puffs of steam
leak past the lid, barely
manage to remember your life
as it was and still
is, while the potatoes
boil and life, which you
always have said must go
on, really does go
on, a plea, an
ordinary plea, an
ordinary day, that
life can continue
completely ordinarily
without it ever happening
that any of all
the cruel experiments