Sunday Poem

This is Where we Were Born (#1)

The gaze adjusts itself to
the walls, the political commentators
in the newspapers
portrayed in dresses
with cats
and lovers
and the three-day stubble
intact

the tv news is a man
he says: everything is rags
he measures steps with herbs
lines with lines
water with lilies

we are called nothing
maybe we are called scream
or shot

we work on slogans
some people
think irony is the only thing power understands
others
want to know what exactly is meant by power
others again
sit still and fiddle with an old spoon
they later use to open cans of paint

the tv news is a man
he says: flood
he says: white knives don’t exist
he says: the arrests are nothing but propaganda
nothing happened
the day, on the other hand, was warm
bright, the parks were open
the population grilled salmon
kids climbed trees

our future: children who climb trees

power is invisible
a skinny middle-aged man says
power isn’t worth a scream
says another, oblivion
sleeps in the mouth of man

oblivion sits hunched over a small map
the city looks like plastic bags
cardboard and newspapers
two hundred thousand women remove their makeup
and get ready for their men
of glass in a bed
of glass

no one screams

the transport industry celebrates agreements
and shows the first steam aeroplanes
famous captains and pilots
from an era no one remembers

until now

Christ is a little chain
youth is Delphic

those who aren’t killed are shot
like cats
indifferent
and persistent

the white knives start to shine at midnight
corpses drift ashore

everything is rags

we are called nothing
we try to eat
sleep
under the moon
under the tv sets

Pedro Carmona-Alvarez
from Varmestafetten
publisher: Gyldendal, Oslo, 2009