Christopher Burawa
FIVE TRANSLATIONS OF JÓHANN HJÁMARSSON

Waking beside the Source
On the Death of a Poet   
Morning Light in the Faroes
Song
Love Poem

About Christopher Burawa

Waking beside the source

You start from sleep beside a spring
just as if you had dreamed you
were searching for frightened people
among the trees

Then come the horses with their bulging
ant eyes

And your blood issues from this spring
just as you had dreamed

The black horses drink from your red, angry bowl

on the death of a poet

The summer sunsets only give off red and here I extend
my hands that cannot even lift a bayonet

It would be better if I had some power over them
like a daring soldier over his metal snap-together weapons

But I’ve inherited an inadequate vocabulary
and most of the words I’ve lost
on my walks around the block

The sunsets are red and my sorrow and joy
are laid up in them

Blue is the color of distances
that the sunsets rust along the way

morning light in the faroes

The night holds the sun in its mouth.
A spine of tide lifts and the monster opens its eye.
The island splits the encrusted skin.
Blood oozes from the wound and wets the rock face.
Then the soon-to-be carcass flies in agony
over the white fiery tongues of the depths, boats pour
out from its lips and drive toward land shoals of sunlight.

song

On this night I think about someone from my past
because I have risen to the song of the pearl oyster.
The angel of booze has whispered in my ear
like spinning could mean a pinwheel inside a rock frieze:
You lived the fast life of a shooting star
but could not scatter or plunge into the sea.

I walk below on the beach where Baldur’s Eyelash grows
I see a flash from the sky that falls into a flat sea
and then the golden world of sand opens
I can hear the plashing oars of strange vessels
coming to punish me for this song, warm angel.

love poem

With you to be prepared for joy to be prepared
for your eyes for your hands to be prepared
for your voice with you alone to be prepared

With you to be prepared for your sorrow to be prepared
for your lips with your feet to be prepared
for your silences with you alone to be prepared

can I overcome difficulties without shedding blood