Four Poems

Translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennnifer Russell.

First Zone

Why am I light-catchingly alive?
Light-catchingly companionably expectantly alive?

At least among those in the untimed breathing room,
the changeresses, the talking animals, the vast expanses.

Because we picked me and each other to be
last time there was a primordial vote around these parts.

Networking

I can see them like it was yesterday.
The dewdrops that tightroped in the cobweb forest.
One was more translucent than the others.
At my slightest breath they each swayed in their network
which I happened to avoid getting caught in.
The morning I happened not to be an insect in September.

Condition Report

While travelling in the mountain realm I discover in clear weather 
     how unbusy the Earth
can be mountain after mountain as far as the eye can reach.

Lonely, I make myself noticed by touching with my left elbow and 
      right big toe
the beginning and ending of a hundred-metre-long white thread.

The Big Evening

Evening was a bigger place than all the other places I knew.
It was best to run around the corners of the house in the evening
outside the windows’ light. It shined inside and out.
It was best to run for a long time and get as much evening and darkness
as possible on your body and your clothes. Just like all the people 
        who’ve become invisible do.
My eyes didn’t get darkness all over them. It only looked like darkness
with darker trees and lit-up windows inside, but it was something else.
There was no time to see what the something else was.
It whooshed by me too fast. I ran after it. Around and around
the house. As many times as I couldn’t count in the big evening.