THE COLLECTED POEMS OF HENRIK IBSEN Translated by John ...

250
and I stand, arm in a sling,
mid the ruins of my vision.
So it’s need (no point in lying)
prompts this long, long overdue
letter I now send to you, —
letting the balloon go flying.
I’ve no doves, you may assume; —
doves and hope, birds of a feather, —
and within this clammy tomb
only owls and ravens weather.
But a letter to a lady
via owl or raven’s shady.
So — last year, as well you know,
with your Mælar sky gloom-shaded,
biting frost and foliage faded,
south and deltawards I go.
It was summer there, perfection.
Brightness with a strong reflection,
like our fjords that mirror glaciers.
Palm-groves, sycamores, acacias
casting blue-green shade-fantasias.
We saw Bedouin with missus
perched up on their camels, bumping
through the desert’s wildernesses.
At the sight a Nordic bumpkin
(on his first excursion ever)
yelled: “An ostrich, well I never!”
On Ferus we shot up-stream
out of Cairo at full-steam.
Saw the pyramids at Gizeh
where Napoleon orated
while the Sphinx just meditated,
then, before and since — the teaser!
Beni Hassan’s royal mummies’
tombs we crawled through on our tummies.
Centuries have badly crazed them:
all dates subject to correction;
this one can take on the nod, —
Egyptologists I instance, —
and of course I’ve well appraised them —
they were built far in the distance
(when the Pharaoh was a God)
under Potiphar’s direction
with his son-in-law’s assistance, —
Joseph, Jacob’s offspring, raised them.