3 Poems by Niels Hav

Encouragement

Isn’t it an uplifting thought
that in a few decades we
and this whole confused epoch
with its dizzy politicians,
wornout arguments,
mawkish TV hosts, dim journalists,
and the complete crapitalistic jubilant choir
will be gone?                 For all time!
We will disappear.
They will disappear.
I will disappear.
You will disappear.
It will all disappear.
Hurrah!


The dead have no telephones

Letters
no one has written
never arrive. 

Snow covers the churchyard.
A taxi waits outside       
for ten years.                                                     
The dead have no telephones.

Translation Heather Spears


EPIGRAM

You can spend an entire life
in the company of words
not ever finding
the right one.

Just like a wretched fish
wrapped in Hungarian newspapers.
For one thing it is dead,
for another it doesn't understand
Hungarian.

Translation: P.K. Brask & Patrick Friesen


Bionote

Niels Hav; in his native Danish the author of six collections of poetry and three volumes of short fiction. His work has been translated into several languages such as English, Arabic, Portuguese, Turkish, Dutch and Farsi. In English he has We Are Here, published by Book Thug - and poetry in numerous magazines.