Skylab by Rolf Jacobsen
Skylab
Rolf Jacobsen
Translated by Roger GreenwaldWe’ve come so far, thought the astronaut
as he swam around the capsule in his third week
and by accident kicked a god in the eye
–so far
that there’s no difference anymore between up and down,
north and south, heavy and light.
And how, then, can we know righteousness.So far.
And weightless, in a sealed room
we chase the sunrises at high speed
and sicken with longing for a green stalk
or the heft of something in our hands. Lifting a stone.One night he saw that the Earth was like an open eye
that looked at him as gravely as the eye of a child
awakened in the middle of the night.
MARGINALIA
Going outside for a smoke now. It’s a beautiful sky tonight. My favorite time of the day: me, the sky, the quiet, while everybody else is asleep, dreaming.
ABOUT ROLF JACOBSEN
Rolf Jacobsen (1907–1994) grew up in Oslo, Norway, but worked in Hamar for much of his life in a career that spanned more than sixty years. His many volumes of poetry gained universal acclaim, and he is revered as one of the twentieth century’s greatest Scandinavian poets. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Jacobsen’s last and selected poems were published in the
collection The Roads Have Come to an End Now (Copper Canyon Press, 2001) and translated by… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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