Poems - 4

By Morten Øen

this is how I tell you about us
all over again:
this is how I tell you about us. About summer heat or valley floor. The outbreak
of darkness

as Horizon
as Suggested =

your room. Your view

this is how one life lengthens the next. Otherwise it is

sequence:
voices to tell in

and so this is how it has become, I think

there is daylight here (or as close to it as one can get)
dream and hour

*

I rattle off The Sleepless Nights. Your reality as
more desirable than mine

the same dead end you regret

and when you are here, why point defencelessly backward

this under the trees
the white pavilion
what ploughed furrows. What a place

what a place

how much can you remember

once I was tall and comely like you
thought as bird/hand

we read our past
from earth to person. No context. All the same

read yourself into this. Once I was almost like you.

*

dust-yellow plains or forest
impending choice where journey is transfer that cannot be communicated
or presented

stone is not Stone As Burden
writing not approached

burnt paper, salt
earth in this fading light

land without us

translated from Norwegian by David McDuff

Poems - 1
Poems - 2
Poems - 3

Poems - 3

By Morten Øen


as streetlamps are reflected in water the sky above us is first the
one, then the other

summer then rain. The pavements’ curves. Direction which accessible
now

added as real is maybe time sign. This is my name

like: Are swallows lonely
or: This is a flower made of paper

then you make it difficult again

day 1: Enrichment. You are a word
so it tears and tears. My hand against another’s, just images
cheek. Mist. 8 mm.

word against word, or

all this just because a romantic setback is exactly
like Old Friends or Child

just as text emerges from text so sound too is a string

we are 12 years old. The child is a stranger’s

*

seen in relation to the landscape’s size there are not many places
I have been. No one misses me

not the illusions, but ear-splitting silence is used
as in four three four

one colours. One sits and one stays sitting. One thinks that something is lacking…

translated from Norwegian by David McDuff

Poems - 1
Poems - 2

Poems - 2

By Morten Øen


Too close to the sun one evening as though it is immortal we are
ruin’s attractions, unstoppable like the past, a
lacking call for mercy, or on inborn frequencies of
skill; diverging and processed by others, shaped like
metal, lacking ardour of life or death

*

tears hearts in sleep
in realities’ attack of intimacy, the spread of city darkness, the steel
of buildings

…circle and you are out of position. That fundamental vagueness you
explain yourself with, this you have me in

*
I am not the lover you asked for, that remorse-light gaze
through the winter mirror of the city light, or softer cries muted year
by year

but like the darkness I yearn into you, gather and
sink just as continuously as ill-timed. As elaborate as
the difference between born and dead.

*
A blue jug filled with water against the light’s heat…
movement in the book’s shoulder
an outline in your breasts, you who are reading, what do you read in this, you
who are her, are you not here

Then you write yourself in all the same
Then we write ourselves in
Then we write ourselves in equally

and it is summer

you consider yourself a visionary
you consider yourself

a different form. A life no one has anything against, that doesn’t arise
without further ado

and why this now, so precarious
why these deficiencies in a mirror for eyes

there is something of us here, and in order to confuse
I shut you out

there are songs for lost and lonely. Nothing
forsaken is forsaken

translated from Norwegian by David McDuff

Poems - 1

Poems - 1

by Morten Øen

overcome I build myths, time’s crystal wave, diverse
days’ correctness, the dream of inside, low sun, the feeling of
past, like structural elements, loved forth and earlier
seen: Towers of stone and glass. Oceans to disappear in. Forests against
oblivion

I build bridges, corners of the world, all material things. My
mirror-image is: blue eyes, a wrapped-up minute, ceded warmth, and I
rise like a survivor who almost lost his chance
and you say we are bodies, breathing machines, bought time. Floating
falling. misleading

*

it is I or the darkness. Experimentally meet over deeper seas
the flight you catch me at time after time

and from the mouth: Like that you lose sleep, sun, loss, but are more intensely
loved

it is here it bleeds. Ineffective in this undone attempt
obeying like neutralities, and hidden in everything that is physical

*

other evidence exists. Others exist
and are granted to you

inexhaustible body
sand
possible crossing
from lifelessness to reflection
and human
signs

*

I think: the Ocean’s thermohaline circulation
the weight of the trees on the forest floor

direct answers, temporary solutions

that in this swarm nothing is lost
nothing is forgotten

that from the gate to the stone stairway
it is your back that convinces

several pictures from the same time


translated from Norwegian by David McDuff