Karin boye poems about love
Karin Boye
We were born of mothers of heaven and earth
and of powers with no end in view,
nocturnal wills and wills of light
with names that no one knew.
Half awake the summer night broods
quietly on dreams that no one knows.
The tarns' glistening floods
reflect a twilight sky's
This is life's silent hour,
sunny and blessed,
laughing white in power-conscious peace.
The rejoicing and the songs fell silent,
Unlocked is the world's copper gate.
High in its gate-vault here I stand,
and what I see is infinitely great,
and no sight is so without end.
See the mighty clouds, whose distant lofty tops
proud, shimmering rise, white as white snow!
Calmly they glide on, at last in calm to die below,
Candles I saw burning, yes, holy candles on the eternal
mountaintops.
Blessed ones walked there in a trembling mystic light,
The best that we possess,
we cannot give away.
we cannot write it either.
and neither can we say.
No time is like this one,
the evening's final, silent hour.
No sorrows burn any longer,
no voices crowd any more.
Here I go not. This is not I.
This is a lying reflection alone,
asking, wondering where I have gone,
yearning one day to meet its reality.
In springtime, in sprouting time,
the seed its shell destroys,
and rye becomes rye and pine becomes pine
in freedom without choice.
You are like the mollusc in chilly ponds
where sunbeams never get.
She never creeps out from her shell,
her prison she cannot forget,
You my despair and my strength,
you took all the life I owned,
and because you demanded everything,
you gave back a thousandfold.
NOWHERE
I am sick with poison. I am sick with a thirst
for which nature has not created any drink.
From every field leap streams and springs.
I stoop down and drink from the earth&#;s veins
its sacrament.
And the heavens overflow with holy rivers.
I stretch up and feel my lips wet
with white ecstasies.
But nowhere, nowhere&#;
I am sick with poison. I am sick with a thirst
for which nature has created no drink.
WALPURGIS NIGHT
At last I stand near the mountain of the fates.
All around like stormclouds
crowd formless beings, creatures of the twilight,
black-winged,
phosphorous-eyed.
Shall I stay? Shall I go? The road lies dark.
If I stay peacefully here at the foot of the mountain,
then no one will touch me.
Calmly I can see their struggle like a play of the mist in the
air,
myself merely a lost eye.
But if I go, if I go, then I shall know nothing more.
For the one who takes those steps
life becomes legend.
Myself fire
I shall ride on coiling snakes of fire.
Myself wind
I shall fly on winged wind-dragons.
Myself nothing,
myself lost in the storm
I shall fling myself forth dead or living, a fate future-heavy.
YOU CALL FOR PEOPLE
You call for people of great stature. What gives great stature
to a person?
To become nothing and forget oneself for that which is greater
than she.
The unrepentant call out. They themselves would grow into giants
the moment they bowed their knees in the shadow of the immense
things.
But raise your voices until the gods awake, until new gods
rise up and answer!
When no one asks for people any more, then your people will be
here.
CHERUB
Also you, who suffer the agonies of everyone&#;s condemnation, Writer & Poet Karin Boye International Women’s Day on March 8 always makes me think about revolutionary women. Writer Karin Boye is on the top of my list of Swedish trailblazers, recognized as one of the most influential contributors to modern Swedish literature. Known for pushing the boundaries, and raising confronting questions of self-discovery, she brought forth many undiscussed narratives and critiques of society in the ’s and 30’s. While I’m not the biggest poetry connoisseuse, I do like to use it in my teaching to promote creative and poetic language from my students. Today, I’ll cover a bit of Boye’s background, and highlight one of Boye’s most famous poems, “Ja visst gör det ont / Of Course it Hurts.” (Psssst, her biography is sort of a bummer. If you&#;re up for the drama, read on, if you&#;re more keen on some beautiful poetry, scroll on!) Karin Boye was born in Göteborg in , and went to school in Uppsala from where she studied Scandinavian Languages and Literature. Her first collection of poems, Moln / Clouds, was published in to critical acclaim. She was also involved in a far-left, anti-fascist publication group Klarté, latching onto modernist and surrealist narratives. She had a brief marriage to fellow Klarté member Leif Björk from , that turned out to be more of a friendship. After their divorce, she wrote the novel, Kris / Crisis, where she struggles to accept herself as a lesbian woman. She was together with Jewish-German Margot Hanel, whom she met in Berlin, from The History of Nordic Women’s Literature acknowledges her contributions to poetry but says “the pinnacle of her writing, [&#;] is Kallocain, , which offers a terrifying vision of the future, of a world destroyed by war between superpowers and atomic weapons.” This piece was inspired by her visits to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, like many super-talented and sometimes troubled creative minds before her, she committed sui
also you are called to your place among the cherubim &#;
with lion&#;s feet, with wings of sun,
with venerable human head:
beast-angel.
They call after you: &#;Impure, impure!&#;
Because they were never afflicted by purity.
Flame, gather your sparks out of the corners,
the forge awaits, and Complete Poems
TREE
When my door is shut and my lamp has gone out
and I sit in twilight's breathing wrapped,
then I feel around me move
branches, a tree's branches.
In my room where no one else lives
the tree spreads a shadow as soft as gauze.
It lives silent, it grows well,
it becomes what some unknown one thinks.
Some spirit-power, power secret made,
in the trees' hidden roots its will has laid.
I am frightened sometimes and ask in fear:
Are we so surely friends?
But it lives in calm and it grows still,
and I know not where it strives and whither it will.
It is sweet and bewitching to live so near
one whom one does not know
*
, OF COURSE IT HURTS
Yes, of course it hurts when buds are breaking.
Why else would the springtime falter?
Why would all our ardent longing
bind itself in frozen, bitter pallor?
After all, the bud was cover all the winter.
What new thing is it that bursts and wears?
Yes, of course it hurts when buds are breaking,
hurts for that which grows
and that which bars.
Yes, it is hard when drops are falling.
Trembling with fear, and heavy hanging,
cleaving to the twig, and swelling, sliding -
weight draws them down, though they go on clinging.
Hard to be uncertain, afraid and divided,
hard to feel the depths attract and call,
yet sit fast and merely tremble -
hard to want to stay
and want to fall.
Then, when things are worst and nothing helps
the tree's buds break as in rejoicing,
then, when no fear holds back any longer,
down in glitter go the twig's drops plunging,
forget that they were frightened by the new,
forget their fear before the flight unfurled -
feel for a second their greatest safety,
rest in that trust
that creates the world.
*
STARS' SOLACE
I asked a star last night
- far away, where no one lives, a light -:
'Whom do you light, strange star?
You move so large and bright.'
It made my pity grow mute,
when she looked with her starry gaze,
'I light a night eternal,
I light a lifeless spac