What Olaf Bull Said
By Robert Bly
“Believe in happiness, Seiglinde, try!”
– Olaf Bull
Happiness is the wind rising
In a field of young plants.
It is a new-fallen apple
Found in the dark earth
Far from the orchard
In plowing time.
Do fish have emotions? Do fish have an inner life? Don’t say that instinct alone propels them up water falls to spawn and die, for their is too much joy in the leaping. Why can’t we as humans project our humanness the beings that inhabit this earth with us, for then the reverse would also be true? Do the non-human beings of the earth project onto us only wildness? Maybe that’s why disorder and chaos and predation of war seem to dominate the 24/7 news cycle as the norm? Maybe the beings of the earth that are not human are plotting our demise? Too late I think as we seem to have that trajectory well in hand on our own.
Let’s hope the salmon swimming upstream are propelled in part by joy. Let’s hope that they swim to one final act of procreation and then their death with the knowledge of completion and a feeling of fulfillment. It might inspire us to follow our journey with the same passion, athleticism and conviction in harmony with nature or more in harmony than we live today. Let’s hope we all can swim back to where we came, in time for one final romance or the completion of a life long one.
Et Overstreget Digt
by Olaf Bull
Bag et gitter af streger
stirrer et daarligt digt.
Et ærligt skind igrunden,
men ikke yppig runden
af sang og stemning og sligt.
Født af en mager moder,
af hjernens skrumpne skjød,
næret af tankefoder,
som hjernecellernes boder
i fattige timer bød — —.
Forstandens hodepine
dirrer i digtets krop –
afmægtig i sin feber
det ramser med tørre læber
sin grimme vise op.
Det rusker i sine streger,
vil løs af det grumme bur; –
det er min farligste fange
trods mange velskabte sange,
som strømmer i min natur.
A Struck-through Poem
by Olaf Bull
Caged-in, a shoddy poem
from bars of strokes peers out.
Honest enough a fellow,
though hardly round and mellow
with song and tuneful clout.
Spawned by a skinny mother
a wizened brain its womb,
mere scraps of thought the fodder
that brain cells had on offer,
in meagre hours consumed – –.
And reason’s fearful migraines
the poem’s body racked –
by fever now prostrated
cracked lips reel off unsated
their ugly tuneless song.
Its bars of notes, it rattles,
its cruel cage that it would force; –
it is my dire captive
though songs well-formed, attractive
course through my whole being.
Fourteen Lines 