Volume - Center for the Art of Translation

Is No One Coming — Web Exclusive

By Inger Christensen
Translated by Susanna Nied

Looking into the gossip mirror in there out there
          angled light opposite and red just creeping the tiny
          beetle reflectors away from away from
looking for you just if coming for whom by the way
          coming with tiny feelers without making it, shadow
hoping for water that will wash you home through air
          like a bath when I throw all windows out of our
          house
begging for wind that will pull your limbs you skin
          hair sex clearly playing in air when I turn off
          the radio now
removing the infected eyes and scratching my thoughts
          with the pencil no one must see for this is said
          and said in all confidential darkness this glimmer
          continues without eyes continues as with ant after
          ant finding nothing but ant after ant legions of
          blindness or what
what about the feeling of grass among ants in grass
          where we travel for years the grass where we lay
          coming creeping the children see see a flower from
          the holy place no not coming
is no one coming in angled light and forgotten through
          grass through sun without a mirror through eyes
          without ants through you
is no one coming through you?

Excerpted from the anthology of world literature Some Kind of Beautiful Signal.