From “If it Is a Poem” [Ako e stih],  2022

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Today is the day to be kind
To support a friend
A cause
To plant a flower
To read a poem
To take a shot of a beautiful cloud
To respect yourself
And others
Today is the day to be brave
To be grateful
To see these green
Leaves
Which turn into red
To greet
This blue bird
Which came to visit
Today is the day
To see this fruit tree
Which presents proudly
Its apples
But no one reaches out

To pick one
And enjoy
…
I wrote the poem
I picked the apple
Do you want a bite?

***

I love hugging trees
because of the stories they whisper
because of their curvy roots
bulging proudly about the surface
because trees hold each other
brotherly underground
while their branches
wave their aery crowns
high above
because even when some trees
have split trunks
their hands above
are united
I now hug this Yew-tree
500-year-old grandpa
with red skin
in our garden
and I listen
stories of Silver lake
and the breathing mountain
people around
their ancestors
some even live nearby

What tales
You will whisper, Yew
when today’s world
disappear?

In the middle of the night

One wing broken
The other – unstitched
God, let me wake up
But to be myself again

The post Random Poems (2019-) appeared first on Daniela Nyberg.

***

All the shadows
Heading toward themselves
And the lake is swinging sunshine
I hold something in my hand
And I follow
The thing that I am carrying

The path ends somewhere
Then there is only water
But isn’t there some land out there?

Whatever is going to happen
I fly
Be it a very short flight

***

After today’s royal day
The forecast was rain for seven days
I grabbed my camera and rushed
To collect sunshine and blue
For seven days rain
Sunshine and light
To drink
In small gulps

***

A white broom had swept the sky
And I saw the sky’s eyelashes

***

The sky this morning in just a few moments –
Cantata Πάντα χωρεῖ for choir and orchestra
I have no other choice
But to sing of it

***

And though clouds look just like clouds
And everything looks like before
And singing birds’ throats are trembling
As known
It’s not just a cloud
Spring is here
Blossom
White
Beginning
Whatever song is out there today
Tomorrow
Will be swept away

***

The sky this morning
A giant aquarium of jewelfish
They constantly change their names
And follow, and follow the current

***

This puddle mirrored the sun
But just for a moment
And from an exact angle
I grasped the moment
I sized the angle
And
I chose to write it down

***

I enter the forest quietly
The forest with the brook
In the closest Park Ravenna
But no, it is not a forest
Bewitched princes are the trees
And I  am a fairly tale princess

Yeah

The lady-jogger that just passed
I will name a roe
Although she runs with earbuds
And yells to the bewitched forest
And to those hiding in her plugs

…

To me, it is a time to keep still
To give play to my fancy
And breathe

***

The world needs good news
A spoon per day
As one learns a second tongue
But first comes a yearning for it
In the spoon – sunrise
Top of a mountain
On the top – alpinists
Golden apples
Laughing children
Sunset
Bread

And other precious little things
which nest in everybody’s hands

***

It had bent 90 degrees
Nothing straight
Had remained in it
A tree
With shoulders
But no head
And as I cheered
For his life
I was lamenting
for its broken peak

***

I saw all kind of insects
On my son’s grave
Two snails
Yellow flowers
Young tree
I never asked myself
And there is no need to ask
How one lives
And how it is connected
It simply  is
If one recognizes

Sozopolon’s poems 2018

In the sea
I don’t dare
To go deep further
The sea will gulp me
We so much love each other

***

First Marital Kiss

It dawned
It lightened
The sun just had licked
The lips of the sea
With fiery sunbeam
I descend down the stairs
Of Jinny Bar
Which typically play classic rock
But now broadcasts Mendelson
Wedding on the seashore
My God
Marital kiss above
Marital kiss below
And I – a  witness

***

Something has happened last year
With Jinny Bar that is  on the  seashore
The terrace with dark roof has gone
I had my own table there
For writing  research papers and poems
And there was something else that had gone
From the charm of old Jimmy
Turned into trendy-bar
Gladly, rock-classics  stayed the same
Dinosaurs don’t die,  do they?

…

A day later however
I found
a corner for research papers and poems
Because dinosaurs don’t die
Right?

People Wearing Poems

Sea
Sun
Sea tide
Low tide
People walk around
Only wearing poems

Crystals

The sea is a crystal
said a child
half body wet
he grabbed sea-water
with cupped hands
and  crystals began flowing
through his fingers

Ordinary poems 2017

***

The day is still  a bachelor
The balloon is still expanding
the rose is about to  travel
in all directions, and all rhymes

Fresh daisy girl I am
I am a flickering aspen
The  world is all inside –
I am still there entirely

The Net

I nest in the net
Net nests in me
One after another
I wear crochet dress
I write
I am transparent

***

To G.

It is now sweet and sour
You became my dearest friend
I love you as you are entire
Men’s world I can embrace

And I cannot imagine
Myself outside your greeting face
I take from you all I can handle
And I wear it with pride and grace

Freedom

I’m drawing
Rainbow after rainbow
Spirals
Labyrinth
Are springing
I wriggle between them
Guided by my pencil
And I do not have fear
That I will fly
Beyond the outlines
If I run out of space
I will invent it

***

I love my life
when I go under iron bridges
and green leaves behind them  peek
Green-golden glow red-beam
Red-brownish ones are bearing sadness

I love my life
When the rooster crows
and barefoot I meet the day
when I lift on toes to carpe diem
and “carpe diem” I am myself

I love my life
when I meet people who carry light
aware of darkness
When I discover new horizons
And sleeplessly I look at these at night
I love my life
And when it is not for loving
When it is not evoking love at all
When we burn, and cry, and struggle
Yet not arguing with things that
We don’t understand

But I love life
Dots, lines, leaves with handles
Sad-beautiful-unpredictable
fairly tale
For giving
And for love itself

…

Translated by Daniela Nyberg (2018)

The post I Chose to Write it Down appeared first on Daniela Nyberg.

From V uhoto na rakovinata [Echoes from the Conch] (2016, Ab Publishing House)

The post Between the water and the mountain appeared first on Daniela Nyberg.

How, in my view, poems are born?

How let’s say
Verse banal is born? —
You swim in an ocean of words
You catch a few
And get out
Let them dry
Now
How are the other poems born?
The genuine ones?
You live in the ocean
You sleep there
Eat

Ah, what happened? I got lost
What am I having in my hands?
Oh, clams…
OK,  clams I can accept

An Attempt to Escape

This is the end of silence
The words opened their floodgates
And there is no stop
They had been tied for decades in a corner
I don’t even know
in which one
I only knew
They were missing
And now, oh dear
No one can stop
This avalanche
Of words
Speeding
Eager

What I want to say?
This is a secret
Now I am hiding myself
In a leaf—
A small piece of paper
which contains me entirely

***

Over the years
My poems became
Even easier to be grasped
What went wrong with me
My Lord?

How Does It Feel to Be 44, Mom?

The world is so beautiful
Being 44, An-Marie
You dream about roads and love
As it used to be
About silence
And noise, eventually

You had seen me crying?
Well, I am genuine, my dear
And the pain talks to me
Like one speaks to one’s peer

Is That Me That Is Not Aware?

Is That Me Who Is Not Aware?
Is that me who is not aware
What a powerful thing is the word?
Me?
Who is giving examples
For words dangerously said and written
Me?
Who got early the message
That some doors crack open precisely
With
“Sesame, open thyself!”
Otherwise, the road to escape
May abruptly disappear
Why then
I wrote so many poems
Half of them already happened
The other are
Waiting for the opportunity
To turn real

My world

I am not giving away
My world
For anything in the world
Because it is mine
And because it is a world

September 29, 2007

Translated by Daniela Nyberg (2012)

The post The Last Week of September 2007/2011 appeared first on Daniela Nyberg.

A concert

The voice of the organ
Had carried me away
Into a gothic cathedral
And the Divine
Woke up in me
Penetrating my every fibre
And I was an enchanted
Speck of the atom
I was a spirit only
By spirit surrounded
I was soaring high
Or lying in catacomb
Ascetic I was
A monk
And time
Was following another orbit

Then someone bombarded the silence
With the intrusion of her hands’ clap
For me that was impossible
I was on a different map

A walk

I walk
Clothed in a dress of a perky beauty
And dolled up
On elated heels rattle
Behind me
A horny, bearded creep croaked
“Oh, sweetie pie,
I’ll eat you up!”
Who cares if my thoughts
Plough the nights
And my tongue sings in scores of languages
Tones of devoured books lose their significance
When the stronger sex clatters
His nervous fork

Training

I practice
I race in several corridors
I speed up at their far end
I don’t strike hands with the wind
I leap
Only lie has short feet
I believe
Mine are the right size
I stand in front of the mirrors
I greet the crooked ones with a stone
Then
I begin again

Memo

When the boiling water scalded me
The flange of the boiling tightened into a knot
So many things are repeated in history
Why shouldn’t I pull out my sword?

II. Cycle 1984-1985

Springtime

Pollen tickled the nostrils
And the pipe-drone sneezed
Through the sun’s bagpipe
Life’s nose sprang out
With a newborn cry

And the foliage’s dance
trembled with birds’ twitter
Triumph of Nature!

Until the fall shatters the mosaic
Of shimmering sunbeams

Summer

Bubbling sidewalks
Nearby—deaf streets
Perched on them
Snuggling benches

Torn song splashes in feet’s swing
And women carry both
Songs and drunken husbands

Smoke in step-down holes—
Throbbing musical islands

Among these
Some of those who have so much sky
That they long for a piece of shelter

Autumn

The autumn dissolved in me
In orange
Yellow
Brown
Not quite green
Not red
Indescribable
Vague
Indefinable
Like a sigh
Like a moan
Began gushing
And
Pushed by the lows of nature
Blood rushed through my veins
Maddened by the warmth of the colors
Infinitely amazed
Fully defeated
In mute delight
I stand
And I feel inside me
How
In radiant yellow
Gently
Not quite green
Not red
Indescribable
Indefinable
Vague
Like a sigh
Like a moan
Pours
The most picturesque
In his sad nobility
The most generous
For philosophers
Season

Donna Quixote

My good Rosinante left me
Resting his neck in the yoke of exhaustion
Like many other tired horses
That trot nobly
Down life’s deaf pathways

And stitching the corridors with nerve fibers
I wore out of shoes—all iron
To find a cart
Then after digging my nose from the mud underneath
I wondered whose little stone
Caused my long-faced struggle

So now I’m a rickshaw
Geared by the eternal with-no-answers questions
But I simply don’t have better choice
The rickshaw is the only conveyance                        

***

Well, if only I could…
Well, if only…
Well…

Bli-i-me-ey!
I made it! I could!

A day for things to be seen  

The pitch-darkness
Which I often ripped with my cry
Went blind

Suddenly
The light poured from above
And a new day broke

And the songbird inside
Began fluttering so frisky
That I can’t stop my shining smile

I pinch myself—I am not dreaming
Sunrise I am feeling
The cloud that had dimmed the sun
With its shoulders within
Hissingly began crawling

The street stared at me with its arches
“Terpsichore!?!”
And I am ready
To turn myself into a crumb
To be pecked by these sparrows—
The street’s hungry branches

***

I am so tiny and small
That a drop seems huge
From you life drips away
Drop by drop
Drop

***

I was lying in the water
When you bent over the creek
Your thirst touched my lips
Did not blur my eyes

I flow in love’s stream
You drink from it
And fall asleep next to me

The shadow

The shadow swims
In ocean of tram’s shouts
I want to get off
But the sand sticks on the wet
(The tiredness of clockwork rhythm
does not bother
what is already baked)

And I put make-up on my days’ face
So as not to feel how prickly is
The colorless sand dress

Yet such is the cross of the shadow
Let it bear it
Let it
I already called the wind
And I’m drying
Gradually

***

When the glance lifts its blinds
thoughts stream down
into the tears of the woman
who chops onions

Sniffing
she soils the napkin
in which tomorrow
she’ll wrap her child’s lunch pack

A dialog with one’s three eyes

Recently I soothed my pains
Yet they got hold of me
And I walk amidst I’m-fine-how-are-you?
And among other such casual niceties
I am sad
And I know where this sadness comes from
And I pour it out on paper
Forgetting the link between gold and silence
And there
A flow of words
Extinguish the hardships
Of a fire dancer
Who gave her soles to the glowing embers
Not having right spirit within

I remember the link between gold and silence
I put away the relieving balm
In daytime—one, another, casual grin, no…

At night
I dream of Sts. Constantine and Helen

If the wine has been drunk

If the wine has been drunk
Let’s not sing praise to shortsightedness
Let’s admit: “There is no more wine!”—
(falsely clink glasses profaned by vinegar—
like a toast to a crumbling house)

If, at the table, in a silent scream
Lashes the slap of the “three-dots”…
Let us erase the last two
Let’s not turn into fish in the mud
Of whatever is coming

Do you want us
To give each other an edelweiss
And then break the glasses?

The 1985 New Year’s Eve

I wouldn’t curse even the evil
That married peace to crucifixion
To taste this chilling expectation
That cuckoo-nested in the eyes’ clock-face

Some say walls have ears
(what else could they have at this hour)
When the heels of the past flash clear
Through eyes drained by tense staring

So I leave no stone unturned
To find a clay to mold a smile
To fool the curiosity
That looks at my wet eye

God only knows in which tavern
You broke the pitcher into pieces
While crazy me
With desert throat
Was waiting for that water
In hope

Nineteen Eighty-Four 

The foreheads of the dormitories grow heavier
Covered by the wing of inertia
Underneath the lowered eyelids
The eyes put on pajamas
With unmatched buttons
Tears don’t permeate one eye
The other one doesn’t shed a drop
In the early hours
Dreams tiptoe home from the tavern
In the mole’s room
The doorman jots the latecomers
Who slam through the door

Morning rustle

Whenever I feel the caress of silk—
Thinnest of cobwebs—
I let its tenderness sink in
I sway in its folds
While childish wonderment sways in me
From the crafty silkworms
From the eternity of the cocoon
From the butterfly of life
Whose oasis of colors alights on its wings
Before they wither away like a faded fall robe…

And yearning for flight
The frail shoulders
Shake off the burden of thorny sadness

And  a hundred pipes soar
And I spread out my wings
Higher
And higher…

The good old boiling pot

I spring out of the fountain
In a robe of white lace
I flutter my wings—
Captives of the sky
Underneath
The grass sleeps
Tired horses do not dream of wind
Dreams do not welcome water or fire

Yet
The good old boiling pot is brewing
And  the herbs in it talk to each other

III. Growing Up

***

The day—hit by a sling
Rests quietly in a starry nightgown
In the bed—a gaping precipice
In the precipice—a roaring fire

And I glow red and black
Having been all day long
Creamy-caramel-yellow

I take the chestnuts from the fire
And I jump onto the greenish-blue ship
Of the morning

1987

In such a harmonious nature
life—disordered
crudely forged
flows out—
as it should—
from a pair of eyes
in order to continue
to tickle naughty branches
that can hardly wait
to grin again
in green

1988

Verses in mourning

Remembering Chernobyl

Hunger got astride-on the shoulders—
Sunk his teeth into the slice of life
The slice—old
Crumbles like ripe wheat

The fresh bread flows into long arms
Those pregnant with utopias are so generous

But if the mothers of children with blank eyes
Abide their crosses
Let those whose children have no fingers
Poisoned in the womb
By air
Bury not their grief at home
In silence

Yet…the goddamned tram still screeches
Running over those with no blinders

1986 (One year after Chernobyl)

***

Wading through a quicksand swamp
I am trying to get out
But my strength is running out
Run
ning
ou
t
Two vultures across are chuckling

I do not despair
I do not despair
(I am already sunken to the waist)
I do not despair
I do not
de
spa
a
a
a
a
.
.
.
What death
Will come
tomorrow when enter the other land?

***

What is the last resort of a person
Hanging by one hand
On a worn-out thread of wool:
A knife
Sleeping pills
Railway
Heights
And
Depths
And most of all
A courage
To take the opportunity
Or not

1987

***

A toothpick
Teeth
Crack
Nerves
A knot
Thoughts
Gallop
Bending down
Sparkling dots
Staring at the ceiling
Nightie’s knobs
Graying hair
Subdued sounds
For the soul
For the grandsons

1987

A poem whose words I have forgotten

……  ….. …….. ….
….  ….. …….. …. ..
…. ……. ….. …… …
still my soul is pure

…. The rising down
……  …  … … …..
…. …. ….. …… …
yet my soul is  pure

….. … ….. …. … ….
…. …  virgins of Vesta
The sun yearns for his bride
The groom—my glowing essence

1987

Wisdom

My childhood girlfriend passed away
She left a son
My six-year-old son passed away
He left a mother
My grandma is old
Often repeats
God is kind

1992

***

Night thins out
And dreams soak slowly
Into my heavy nightgown
How can I put it on tonight again
When it has imprinted all
And recalls things
Which the dawn
Wisely strives to put behind
Yet, woven whole by invocations
My robe will summon me
I’ll sing for her
And before next dark come
I’ll ask the Light
To hold me tight

1994

The post Early Poems: Scent of Water 1983-1994 appeared first on Daniela Nyberg.

From “The City of Salvation” [V grada ana spasenieto] – Music-and-poetry album

Listen in YouTube.

The post From “The City of Salvation” – Music-and-poetry album appeared first on Daniela Nyberg.