As we meditate on Good Friday let us listen to three poems written in 1948 by the Danish poet Halfdan Rasmussen.
Halfdan is most well-known for his humoristic poems. But as life is not only lived in joy, he sure also wrote sad poems. Poems about war.
The first poem is called After Bikini and describes the atomic bomb.
1) The earth is dust and flame. Humans are all gone.
No living eye now reads the stars that travel on.
No one shall weep again. No one shall ever laugh.
Nothing shall come to pass.
2) Here stood a mighty tree! Sunlight and rain would play
over a nest up there. Snow brought a gentle day
sprouts on each branch showed dreams began in Spring to trust
all is dust, only dust.
3) Here stood a house with life! Doors with a creak would sing.
Walls held the fading sound each weary step could bring.
Life left its shadowed trace deep in the dust that fell.
Dust overall now dwell.
4) Hare and the stag and fox. Sparrow and dove and crow.
Fish in the ocean’s depth, all known in tides below.
All that the open world cherished and called by name
fade like a dying flame.
5) One who knew tender hands. One in a lonely place
of whom nights darkness screamed, now he found light’s embrace.
One who grew cold with hate. One who with faith would burn.
all to the dust return.
6) Child and troubled mother. Lover, brother, and friend.
Night’s thin wandering mice. Life that gave without end.
Voices and steps and cries, silence and sound of weep
in dust they all now sleep.
7) Fire sinks softly down. Life here is ended quite.
Silence’s hidden heart beats in the buried night.
Humans rose out of dust; to dust we all shall turn.
That dust is pure we learn.
The second poem is called ’smile without gestures’ and is all about fear and doubt as one is parted from love.
1) The lips can never smile again,
the eyes can never play.
The hands by doubt’s white breasts of snow
lie still like hardened clay.
The ice will never melt again
along the darkened way.
2) The warmth in words that once were bright
when flowers sang at play.
The joy that filled each word with light
when days were kind and gay.
All turned to arrows forged of ice
that drove the life away.
3) The hands’ caress, the body’s dance
in darkness far away.
The lips’ bright wreath of burning flame
tells more than word can say.
All gained a piercing dissonance
of fear in what you pray.
4) Where is a joy so pure as that
which asked no soul to say?
Where fled the love that once was free
that left no wound to stay?
Where are the words of mouth and pen
that spoke their rich array?
5) All things lie wasted now by fear
and frozen where they lay.
The scream behind the lips cries: flee!
yet flight brings wreck one day.
The silence settling over all
demands the dearest pay.
6) The scream that sleeps behind the song
of kisses gone astray.
The cry that flees toward the sea
falls silent in its way.
For everything must drift at last
to life’s dark bed of clay.
7) The lips can never smile again,
the eyes can never play.
The hands by doubt’s white breasts of snow
lie still like hardened clay.
The heart can never beat again
along joy’s empty way.
The last poem is called ‘no one is truly alone’ and is in later years called a poem for pilgrims. It encourages us to find ourselves and by doing so our community.
1) Little human heart, temple
and silent peaceful space,
grant my silent lips the tones
that long to find their place.
Teach me to meet today and live
with open, honest eye,
help me carry through my dreams,
though hope at times may die.
2) All wounded and forsaken,
alone we walk the night,
tending all our sorrows with
trembling and careful sight.
Teach us to bear life’s small flame,
that flickers yet and bright,
into the fragile clay where
we all are bound in plight.
3) You are not alone, my dear
little brother left behind,
as you wander through the dark,
you cross another’s mind.
If you stop at a crossroad,
your gaze will surely find
the dream-marked paths where long ago
your brothers walked, entwined.
4) The wind has known your brother,
the rain has seen your friend,
where he walked in misty fields,
made up of youthful bend.
Voices of snowstorms coming,
forests’ dark and endless end,
whisper to your heart that here
he strayed and could not mend.
4) The earth that drank his footprints,
the sky that heard his prayer,
the sea that took the sons tear
as lost he could not bear,
the space that draped his shoulders
with a cloak of soft care,
follows you through sleepless nights
beneath the moonlit air.
5) No one is truly lonely,
no one is wholly torn,
singing human hearts will call
to yours until the morn.
At the crossroads if you linger,
your brother’s voice is worn,
and life’s echo finds your words
in solitude reborn.