Some Poems by Erik
Stinus
August 22, 1934 - November
13, 2009
In about 1969, a friend, Mogens Brynjolf, introduced me to
Erik Stinus and his wife Sara in Copenhagen. I'd met Mogens in Lagos, Nigeria where we were both
volunteers and would-be poets at Yaba Technical College. As Erik had spent much time in Africa
there was a connection.
Subsequently, we hatched a scheme where I would try and get Erik's poems
published in England. I got a folder of his typed translations. I think he depended on Sara's English
to help him with these drafts. She
was originally from Mumbai India. I did succeed
in getting one of his poems After the Rains published in an
British poetry magazine (Workshop New Poetry, 1972) but, unfortunately, no more than one! When I married and left the UK to live in the
US we lost touch.
Now, via the web, I find both Erik and his wife are
dead. Erik died in 2009 from cancer. Sara, Erik's muse, died in January 2006. Mogens died in 2006. His artist brother, Jorgen Brynjolf, died in 1993.
But I still have that
folder of Erik's poetry. The full contents can be seen on my Academia site.
And I still have numerous numbered lithographs and etchings by Jorgen Brynjolf hanging on our walls, including all 10
original raderinger af Jorgen Brynjolf from Forord Til En Fremtidig Bog, by
Isodore Ducasse Comte de Lautréamont, oversat af Karen Stougard Hansen,
Stamattina, Kobenhavn 1968.
As Erik published multiple volumes of poetry in Denmark, I
expect all of the poems that follow are copyrighted accordingly in their Danish
version. These English
versions are mostly the work of Erik and Sara with a few changes that I've
made.
Colony
Through seven years
the heavens threatened us
with their tyranny
Through seven years
we had no courage to turn around
and lament the burning villages
Through seven years
the heavens waited
for man to cease praying
Through seven years
starvation squeezed the country
the dead were forgotten in fear
Now from the depths of the forest
thunder is sounding
A spear - quivering - is planted in the soil
Erik
Stinus
Koloni, from Graeneland
Five Ephemeras in
Memory of a New Year
i
the sky is hazy
neutral a
fragile slope
calm after a violent nightmare
leaning over the sea it is stretching
and nearing
happy and surprised
that reality is coming to meet it
these green trees those poor men
schoolgirls carrying books in their arms
the dark bound them to blindness
the morning dissolves all shadows
all eyes are seeing
ii
look at these eyes
roses and cherry blossom
ships and birds fading stars
and the torch procession
these red faces wearing no masks
but singing
and with their songs
conquering the false darkness
the churchyards and the crematoriums
to preach the gospel in a new way
iii
since you led me into the desert
telling me about the secret life of stones
since you showed me the lone fertility of the oases
I'll whisper to you
that I don't like to see women in uniform
because I want beauty to be immortal
that men in khaki would be more useful
playing cards and drinking beer
that I want the music to return
the music of the waterfall
and the colors of the rainbow
of the swamp
the colors of nakedness
and of love
iv
today all has recovered its voice
we need no longer speak our mother tongue
to
be understood
water lilies have tongues
chestnuts have tongues
all dumb things speak and listen
and winding concrete roads
cannot frighten us with their autumn
their heartless mirrors and headlights
v
I am standing at the bulwark
singing for you
day and night
singing your own songs to call you back
I see you once more at your stage entrance
the snow of spotlights lying on your shoulders
birds of sorrow
sitting on your head
and you ready to re-conquer
the indifferent darkness of your audience
with your love
Erik
Stinus
The Invisible
The dawn is a gaping face when
darkness slips out of the forest like a snake
Drowning voices
enter distant jungles
reach ships and strangers
They swarm on the stairs of the sea
where shadows escape with dragging skirts
and slime green shoes
with
the steep and wakening taste of smoke
from cupola cabins
remembering
endless roads of drought
and
churchyard nettles
In
the universe of numbers
Who is it that waits behind those wireless voices?
Who is it that shouts under bewildered steps?
Erik
Stinus
Rain
rain like rain
green rain greener in the dark
birds never tired
birds impossible to strangle
in the distance cars gash the air
smell of earth just a touch
in the green green darkness
where your face lights up
behind veils of soft insects
layer on layer of protection
in the dark which does not darken
in that invisible blackbird
in that starling on the housetop
a collision of transparent umbrellas
& the grass
that grows
tight around your limbs
as I do
and we together
together
like rain like rain
Erik
Stinus
After the Rains
How can one hold
blue waters
brown lands
sail around
travel across?
I'm halted by birds on the wind
by a mountain never closer
yet covering half the sky
and that tiny human being
on its back
his sharp-edged plough
so insignificant
Stillness
green
golden
animals have left their tracks
But what halts me now
is a flute
the only sound on the planet
steppe
and desert ice-cap
Congo
forest and hills of China
transformed into an ocean
tranquil
transparent
but gliding
across this ocean
wordless and warm
this flute is like a boat
Erik
Stinus
(an earlier version published in
Workshop New Poetry, editor Norman Hidden, 1972)
EPIC
i
his canoe moves on the river
the forest is a tunnel
deer and stars hunt across his forehead
birds flicker in his larynx
a web of malaria over his temples
salt fever deep in his chest
& the quick drums of love
in the green dark of his body
at the tunnel's exit a village
a chick beneath hen's wing
in each hut flutes that cry
or have they all departed?
the river is a beaked lizard
the water's teeth tear the water's tongue
who is it that waits on the further side?
a blaze of fire scorches his eyes away
he had just begun to sing
monument:
a boot on the throat
ii
between his tongue and palate
was choked a canoe song hunting song...
from his lips sprang a cry of distress
&
that cry Freedom
& his name now must always signify
the world's two temples: craters hospitals
all the propellers and sounds of the country
(a
cuckoo too)
beginnings of grass beneath gravel and concrete
dangerous vibrations of metal
that river's dead children
against whom you cross yourself in
vain
soldiers absorbed in their helmets but lacking
the sharpness of Hamlet
priests of a new age in yellow mantles from beyond the rains
a sea which ashes defile
long mouth organs of
wharves
& the teeth of the crocodile
but yet my voice has time to stay
above the sad crops of these lands
to defend them against the fire's evil name
Erik
Stinus
The Casuarina Tree
The Casaurina tree
sent forth crows into the world
Now they are returning.
Well
that was the world
and they talk about it length
in order not to hear the night
rising from the earth
a huge damp silence
They still can see the sun
through lacy slender twigs
and below them this hotel
the only building on the plains
(that's where the cars go to sleep).
A guest if yet awake amidst
white and empty beds around him
softly steals a peopled void
A train whistles
and on the tossing earth
he staggers into sleep
where a face he knows awaits him.
He can almost reach it.
That then is the world
The Casuarina tree
gathers coolness around itself
Erik
Stinus
The Hope
This minute has no future
my words are grey words
Dozing I
see years and months dissolved
pictures like laundry spread in the grass
White and blue clothes
which once we wore and shall wear again
You in
the shining costumes of my dreams
I dressed
in the silk of your thoughts
Our words are grey words
without a future
But for one moment
we destroyed all evil
We have grown stronger than our enemies
they shall see us return with a new hope
A fervid dream
without a past
Erik
Stinus
