not too much to wish

LAST WALK THROUGH THE CITY                                    





(to be read most perfectly aloud to bold rhythm jazz)

Before I die I want to stroll through the city one last time
let this be my last humble wish
to walk on my feet through my city
through the city of Copenhagen
as I’ve done so many times before
and I’ll know this is the last time
and I’ll choose my route with care

and I’ll walk down Isted Street or West Bridge Street
and walk down all the narrow sunless side streets with all their shutdown shops
and I’ll look at all the junk-shop displays of yellowed curtains and greasy gas rings
and I’ll rummage in the book boxes and I’ll buy nothing
and not because it’s the last time
but because I never rummage in the book boxes to buy anything
but to rummage in them and think how short and strange life is
and I’ll look at children playing in the small square stony windblown courtyards
and I’ll listen to them shouting to and at each other
and I’ll see their mothers lean out of kitchen windows
and call them in when dinner is ready
and out the windows clotheslines will hang with the family’s underwear
and it will flap in the wind

and I’ll walk through West Bridge’s poets quarter in the gloaming I’ll stroll along Saxo Street Oehlenschläger Street Kingo Street and I’ll stop in someplace in one of the serving houses maybe Café Golden Rain and savor a bitter and nothing else and then out and on I’ll wear my soles thin this last stroll in Copenhagen

I will say farewell to my city and I’ll walk on from West Bridge I’ll go in over the Central Station I’ll pass it in grey light and it will be lightly veiled it will as always resemble an old tear-streaked film and it will stab my heart as it always does

the usual alkies will sit there waiting for nothing
the young hitchhikers will stand with their backpacks and their cartons of milk
hurried and harried people will wait for their connections
families will come with suitcases and baby carriages to take a weekend with the family

in the country

and I’ll stand in a corner and be overwhelmed
and not be able to do anything about it and not want to either
just be overwhelmed by all that life and all that swarm
wet eyes without clear reason
and very very distant

and when I have pulled myself together I’ll shake the shoulders of my coat
shake the Central Station off as a dog shakes his wet fur
or as when you leave a theater after a movie
I’ll light a cigarette and go down West Bridge Street to the Town Hall Square
where everyone flutters around between buses and movie houses
and again I’ll just lean up against a poster-plastered pillar
and I’ll know that here somewhere on these stones lie my whole life and all my dreams
just like so many others’ lives and dreams

everything is so swift and fleeting
like your last stroll through the city
and I’ll walk down the Pedestrian Street like a shadow
and all the way down I’ll be accompanied by all my friends
and they will all be ghosts
and no one but me will see they are there but they are
and we say goodbye to everything and each other
and we are not sentimental
but the air is full of something no one knows what it’s called or is
and we walk there in silent conversation
and somewhere towards New Square they are gone again
and I myself fade out a little further down

My last stroll through the city is done
and a single shadow less frequents the street—


                            Dan Turell  - Danish poet

                     trans.  Thomas E. Kennedy










......this was a sort of a strange heist




....