The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1995, Side 63

SPRING/SUMMER 1995
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
173
I greet the dusk with dread and awe combined
if day-long I have failed the strict command
that every day must, foot by foot, expand
the field of work that I have been assigned.
As flows the river, rushing to the sea,
so runs my life, my only certain one,
for I don’t know, as Earth spins ‘round the Sun,
that even one more day be granted me.
And when the hawser holding me to shore
will hang at last in slackness, knot untied,
and finally the light of day has died,
my drowsy mind will scan my plot once more.
And sadly small it then will seem to me,
for seldom did I have the pith to toil.
Too late, too late! For all eternity
I’ll touch a plow no more to dress that soil.
IN THE SPRING THAW
by Jon Helgason
While roaring breakers flush the foreshore clear
and fleets of clouds sail high above the land,
the days will ask: “What ties detain you here,
twig thrown by waves upon an alien strand?”
The hardy ling that used to flourish free,
befriended by the lichen and the stone,
must wilt embarrassed by the orchard tree
whose boughs with ripened fruit are overgrown.
The racy fluid runs and freely weaves
through roots embedded in their native moor,
but others feel unfit to sprout new leaves
though fertile spring breathe life in every pore.
Foreign the rain that trickles off the eaves,
unknown the winds lamenting at the door.
English translations
© 1995 by Hallberg Hallmundsson