The Bridges by Tarjei Vesaas

Author:Tarjei Vesaas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7206-1648-4
Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers

19

Grieving in the Night-Dark Wood

Not that it might be different. How can it be?

Not that I see any glimmer of hope.

Not that I’m calling to anyone.

Not that I’m thinking as I used to any more.

I am simply there with the flowing water.

The water that stands still, yet moves. Every second. Shifting a little today. Shifting a little tonight. Every single day and every single night—and that’s all I can think about.

It will curve into a thousand places—and I am there, in each of them.

Even though there is a whispering in the night-dark wood, yet this is no wood through which I am walking. If there is a wood, it is a wood on the bed of the great river, that’s what it feels like. There seem to be forests there, when I think about it. I have been inside them; the current drowns them, and I am with them here on the river-bed. The current passes over the treetops, and whispers soundlessly from tree to tree on the river-bed.

In the current everything appears enormous to my mind. It’s no use trying to think as I used to. All my thoughts revolve around moving water.

Clean, cleansing water. Pouring water. At times I see water like floating stars.

Endlessly gliding water—so that every object turned towards it is polished soft and smooth: after an eternity of gliding, stones are as soft as a cheek—while it changes, changes all the time. Sparkling water above hidden forests and hidden chasms—that’s how it is in my thoughts.

I do not call to anyone, but say to whatever may be here: this must be made different! I say it on the bed of the forest on the bed of the river.

Let something happen.

Let the water rise in the darkness, I say, forgetting that it would be a terrible crime. Should the river rise and rear up and throw itself forward and rage and roar—so that everything beneath it might be swept out beyond reach of thought even? In my delirium I have wished it.

I know it will not happen, that is why I can call out. The yell did not even echo outside my narrow, innermost ring of being. All I can think about is gliding water, and objects gliding with it, pausing, being seized again, being carried past the soft stones, and past polished headlands for all eternity. My thoughts are unbearable. Help me, someone.

Did I perhaps believe it would be different now? It cannot be different. How shall I be able to think about anything else but gliding water? I need no light to see it. The water has taken possession, and has no time for the individual.

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