The Long-haired Lorries

Niels Hav

September's the month of the lorries
heavy with hay, and along the lanes
lie edgings of loose straw.
School has long since started
and time's gone quiet and closed away
in dead nests summer has forgotten
in the enormous forest of the reeds.

The membranes shrivel in the eggs
and the half-hatchlings
abandon their own bones
to seep through the tiny pores in the shells —
a scent, a trace
of obituaries in the September wind
as it moves now forward up the road
to comb the lorries' tangled hair.


translated from the Danish by Heather Spears



Read the original in Danish

Listen to the poem read in the original Danish by the author

Niels Hav is a full time poet and short story writer with awards from The Danish Arts Council. In English he has We Are Here, published by Book Thug, and poetry and fiction in numerous magazines including The Literary Review, Ecotone, Exile, The Los Angeles Review and PRISM International. In his native Danish he is the author of six collections of poetry and three books of short fiction. His work has been translated into several languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Spanish and Chinese. He has travelled widely in Europe, Asia, North and South America. He lives in Copenhagen.

Heather Spears is a Canadian writer and artist who lives in Denmark. She has published four novels and twelve collections of poetry. The Creative Eye (07) is the first of a series on visual perception. She has won numerous awards in Canada including The Governor-General's Award for Poetry. Her latest collection, I can still draw (08), was short-listed for the Lowther Memorial Award. She travels widely and has drawn at many international festivals, and in hospitals in the Middle East, Europe and America.