My Grandfather's House
The storm makes the house tremble
but grandfather’s old numbers
of Popular Mechanics
lie firmly in their place
dusty, faded and yellow
and full of pictures
of sensational mechanical things
out-of-date now for twenty years.
– If I opened the house doors
they’d fly off in every direction.
Instead I put my ear to the wall
where grandfather’s rusty nails are resting
in timber that was already old
when he bought it.
And through the pauses in the storm
I hear him driving round the roads
in a big American car
whose engine sounds better and better
each time he stops
repairs it and starts it up again.
Henrik Nordbrandt (born 1945) has published over a score of poetry collections since the mid-1960s and has for long been regarded as one of Denmark’s most original poets. He has spent much of his life outside Denmark, mostly in Turkey and Greece. His 1998 collection, Drømmebroer (Dream-Bridges), won the Nordic Council Literature Prize. A selection of his translations of Nordbrandt is forthcoming from Dedalus Press.
Translated by Robin Fulton
Page(s) 107
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The