translated by Jonathan Larson

When I buy a ticket to the gallery I don’t know 
I am going to meet my mother, I set out 
on the open sea of pictures, but have a sense 
that she has just been in the room. 

The waves rock me,  
hold me upright. 

My mother has stood before the paintings 
I am looking at, her presence  
drowns out the pictures on the walls. 

As the blind man’s hand senses  
the shadow cast by an object,  
I feel she exists. 

She liked to come here, 
lived with these pictures within her,  
drops gather on my forehead. 

Has she come  
so that I won’t be left alone, 
or am I seeking her out 
by entering 
these particular rooms? 

The waves rock me,  
carry me forward. 

My mother has not come to be seen,  
but she is present, 
what will has brought us together, 
or what coincidence? 

My mother belongs to a place 
where one can be anywhere, 
the passage is given, her spirit  
is here. 

We connect with each other  
as if death means  
nothing. 

Over the water we walk, 
her heart reaches me, 
my heart reaches her. 

My mother no longer lives in her inner exile,  
not in nameless swarms of pain, 
she has let go, is moving onward, 
but at the same time exists here now. 

Even after death 
we take care of each other 
the way a dream gives hope 
when the undercurrent sucks  
heavy and turbulent. 

---

Pia Tafdrup (www.tafdrup.com) b. 1952. Danish poet and writer, member of The Danish Academy. She has received the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize in 1999 and the Nordic Prize in 2006 from The Swedish Academy. Pia Tafdrup has published 20 collections of poetry. Her first book When an Angel Breaks her Silence was published in 1981. Among others: The Salamander Quartet (2002-2012): The Whales in Paris (2002), Tarkovsky´s Horses (2006), The Migrant Birds´ Compass (2010) and Salamander Sun (2012). (Eng. Tarkovsky´s Horses & Other Poems 2010) and (Eng. Salamander Sun & Other Poems 2015).  Latest: The Five Senses: The Taste of Steel (2014), The Smell of Snow (2016), The Sight of Light (2018), The Sound of Clouds (2020) and The Touch of Skin (2022). The Taste of Steel & The Smell of Snow, Bloodaxe 2021.  She has also published a statement of her poetics, Walking over the Water, two plays and two novels. Her poems are translated into more than 30 languages in books, magazines, and anthologies. 

David McDuff (b. 1945) has translated several of Pia Tafdrup’s collections, all with Bloodaxe Books, UK. He is also known as a translator of nineteenth century Russian literature, including Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot, all in Penguin Classics.