When you see a monkey banging a clam
against a stone it is like seeing one’s self investigating a philosophical problem.
No one can preclude that animals are cleverer
than us, they manage life without words, we’re unable to do that. Silence
leads us astray in a psychic labyrinth,
words flicker through the brain like fish
deep down; they constantly shift meaning.
Each of us finds our self in a body;
it is possible to make contact with caresses,
but everything becomes more and more abstract.
Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; the mind remembers the settlements
in raw nature. Now we live with bookcases
full of dictionaries, in nameless castles of air, on separate floors. What do you call that?
Niels Hav is a Danish poet and short story writer with awards from The Danish Arts Council. He is the author of seven collections of poetry and three books of short fiction. His books have been
translated into many languages including English, Arabic, Turkish, Dutch, Farsi, Serbian, Kurdish
and Portuguese. His second English poetry collection, We Are Here, was published by Book Thug in Toronto; his poems and stories have been published in a large number of magazines and newspapers in different countries of the world, including The Literary Review, Ecotone, Acumen, Exile, The Los Angeles Review, Absinthe: New European Writing, Shearsman and PRISM International. He has travelled widely and participated in numerous international poetry events in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America. He has frequently been interviewed by the media. Niels Hav was raised on a farm in western Denmark, today he resides in the most colourful and multi-ethnic part of the capital, Copenhagen.
His most recent book, ‘Øjeblikke af lykke’ / ‘Moments of Happiness’ was published by Det
Poetiske Bureaus Forlag, 2020.
