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      November 21, 2022from DeretterEndre Ruset

       
                         After a veil of rain,
                     butterflies rise from
             the ground.  She runs with my
             blow                               n kiss, but its
            moi                                           sture in the
            air                                                    drifts     a
         part.                                  W           here  autumn
            sm          ould                                           ers paper
                                                                                  aeroplanes fly
                  out                                                     of a bonfire’s white
                  ashes.              We gasp             for breath and stamp
            at the clouds                                        try to step on their faces
          like treading after                            plastic bags, run halting
         ly, before we release                    them and grab each other.
      These days I think we’ll             stick to each other like fire
         until we go out. How mo    bile phones go out. How a
            blown kiss goes out.             The way the light around us goes
         out. Until we run around     and around in the dark searching
      for the switch marked              Spring at the back
                     of our minds.
       
       
      Translated from the Norwegian by Harry Man

      from #77 - Fall 2022

      Harry Man

      “On the 22nd of July, 2011, two attacks took place in Norway, the first a bombing in the Government Quarter of Oslo that killed eight and injured a further 209, followed by a mass shooting, the worst in European history. An extreme right-wing terrorist armed with a hunting rifle, a pistol, and jerry cans filled with diesel took a ferry to the remote island of Utøya where a summer camp was taking place. There they opened fire on children, teenagers, organisers, and volunteers, killing 69 people. The senselessness of the attacks shook Norway and Europe to its core. For the past five years I’ve been working with the Norwegian poet Endre Ruset to translate his poems. These are poems that not only commemorate, but that also look to ask deeper questions about the enduring effects of such tragedies on survivors, the bereaved, local communities, and how this ongoing process of PTSD treatment, grief counselling, taking part in studies, workshops, group and physical therapy for so many is profoundly a form of second survival.”

      Endre Ruset lives in Molde, Norway. He has written six collections of poetry, including both elegies and poems after the veteran Japanese ski jumper Noriaki Kasai. His latest collection Deretter (Thereafter) was a Dagblaget Book of the Year 2021.

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