from Moloch: A Story of My Rage

Søren R. Fauth

The darkness beneath the surface
the lie
that opens an abyss in the supermarket one ordinary
Wednesday
the jolt
when I realize that the lie 
the betrayal
is all encompassing 
and the green-eyed monster slowly devours the remains of fat and sinew around my
bones
tosses my heart away
leaves it pulsating in a slick of blood on the floor of the supermarket on 
Indre Ringvej
one ordinary Wednesday evening 

the dried blood after closing time
the left chamber of my heart on the floor by the register
I lie and shake somewhere between the fried onions and 
pickles
the pain at knowing this injury is anything but superficial
the awareness that this hurts more than the loss of Mette
my sister
who is dead
and who died October 1, 2009
in a bed on the second floor of a small house on a street in Svendborg

M did not let anyone down
the universe did
but M did not let anyone down
she did not
she never broke anyone’s trust
she simply died
left us

but indeed, this too, will always feel like something that was
aborted
torn out
the memory
that can never replace the living body
the hand
you hold in your own
the face against your shoulder
M refused to journey in darkness

 

*

Moloch says, “Now I will suck the marrow from your spine
now I will sit on you like a tick
now I will suck so much of you that you are no more
you don’t have a chance”
“Piss off,” I say,
“get the hell away from me
all you do is hurt me
I hate you
your blue eyes
your crooked
scarred nose
your bushy eyebrows
your equivocating bullshit
I hate your lumbering gait
your flailing swimmer’s arms
your flat ass
your florid analyses
 
I hate
the roses in your damn mouth.”



*
Had the betrayal already started at that time
I ask myself today, September 4, 2018
had you started your secret affair
or was it in the days after the concert 
that everything started to fall apart?



*

It is Saturday afternoon
Laura                  our oldest child and only daughter
is on her way back from Crete
she will be here in fifteen minutes
her boyfriend’s parents will drive her home
you lose it on me in the kitchen
yelling and screaming
I’ve had one of my bouts of pitch-black despair
fifteen minutes of bituminous darkness and lament
the endless prognostications     apocalyptic psychoses

repulsive                    possibly unbearable
I am bent utterly inwards
only the rage     anger            self-pity are left
it must be 
impossible
for others to cope with this grotesque             endless darkness
you suddenly explode in rage
Anders starts to cry
he is in the living room watching TV
our sixteen-year-old son
“The least you could do  
is talk about it”
he is sixteen years old
speaking through tears.

The damage is irreparable
I think now in the basement at the desk
everything that
I do wrong
have done wrong                      will do wrong
all that pain
I cause
have caused                             will cause.



*

The clear water          completely transparent       free of jellyfish
swam along the bottom                     dove three times
a sliding motion through the ice-cold water

the third time I do it     I get dizzy
as though my brain stiffens                 my sense of direction and my balance
fail me

a fleeting liberation from all that
we so proudly boast of and convince ourselves that we are

the self must be the most overvalued thing 
                                                         in the world

what a shame               that it isn’t possible to swim it away.

I’ve been reading Luther’s text De servo arbitrio
the German translation 
if anyone
Luther knows
everything is nothing
that humans
spend their lives with their heads up their own asses
that I do. 

I swim with nothing on
at least not in winter
no danger of my member catching anyone’s eye

my minimal member
my minimal self
my monumental farewell.



*

There are times and places so dark
that I cannot bear to recall them 
incidents
that force their way in
that refuse to disappear

In the 7/11 at the train station in Fredericia I consider
                                                                     for a moment
buying the Christmas edition of Bike
the best German mountain biking magazine
there is a review of the Radon Carbon Slice with 
                                                         140-millimeter travel at the front
I flip through the magazine quickly
a photo essay from Patagonia in Chile
volcanoes         snow-covered mountains
there is also an article about Fuerteventura
I could              buy the magazine        I think
I could buy the new Radon Carbon Slice with
                                                          140-millimeter travel at the front
pack my backpack                    travel to Fuerteventura
to Chile                          Patagonia
forget that have to give a lecture soon at AU
                                                                                   for the Løgstrup Lecture Series

I could read in the train
if not Bike then             there is Hans-Jørgen Schanz’s lovely little book about
                                                                                                        the spirit
or Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers by Peter Handke
which is also in my bag                       beautiful and inviting
the Suhrkamp edition
I could go over all this one more time
I have many motives                countless

it’s that there is a place in my memory 
which I sought out three days ago
a place in my memory
which together with you and our therapist I sought out
                                                                    three days ago

a place in my consciousness
so painful
I don’t know if I dare go back there again.    



*

I sense
you feel rejected
you feel that I don’t want to be with you and the kids
and I understand that
this is the conclusion you might reach
this is your interpretation of my behaviour
of what I say                do.

The storm rages outside
the storm rages inside
strong winds from southwest
the sea was as one with the sky earlier today
after days of clouds and hurricane-strength gusts
a sudden clearing at around two
threads of sunlight through the low-hanging     dark blue clouds
the hawthorn hedge’s orange glow
I am walking with you and the dog along the sea in the storm
we stop several times to hug
hold on to each other
stand arm in arm on the rocky beach.



*

You had another man
you had seen another man
a few days before Christmas
“was it,”
I’m just asking,
“was it even me that you were hugging on the beach?”

I love you
If I hadn’t been fortunate enough to have this family
I would have ended in a one-dimensional darkness with no exit
an ‘underground man’             infirm
and now the feeling of being at the margins of others’ lives
as ever
I have slept in a lean-to the last two nights
the crash of the sea in the background
the sea
rocking me to sleep
an allegory
I think
an allegory of my incurable loneliness
an allegory
I think
of my happiness
the sound of the sea
love
gratitude 
Anders 
who is suddenly sitting in the living room and reading
Sejr
who will definitely be taller than me
Laura
who throws her arms around me
when we arrive late in the evening on the twenty-third
Thorbjørn
who throws his arms around his cousin.

Anders
reading in the living room.

Anders             Laura         Sejr           Thorbjørn

You & me.



*

The film plays relentlessly
jealousy corrodes
grills     fries     obliterates
love:
my thoughts dwell
on a sense of absolute betrayal  
complete deception  
your escape from everything
that hurts:
the children who
get older
age
creeping up
the husband
who sighs
your escape from the monotony of daily life
your escape from death
in the end a desperate attempt at avoiding death
delaying it 
by basking in the glow of another man’s adoration
by seeking a place outside of reality
by finding a space
where the self
that paradoxical double movement 
is propelled into another dimension by the very act of orbiting
                                                                     around itself

why can’t I just forgive
shrug my shoulders                understand and reconcile
why do I always end up turning in
                                    on myself

I am constantly treading water
these hidden agendas
lies       secrets             hiding places



*

Late in the afternoon I go for the usual ride
the first twenty-five kilometers from one white town to the
next

Sedella
Salares
Canillas de Albaida
Árchez
Cómpeta 
finally the long descent toward Vélez-Málaga
a feeling of freedom
tearing down the mountain with the Mediterranean in front of me

on the outskirts of Vélez-Málaga I find a cafe
and order a cappuccino

the milk is boiling hot
the cup soiled by overflowing foam and coffee
the waitress is cranky
but fuck it
I think
I drink the coffee and get back on the bike
on the way out of town it starts to rain
black clouds gather
they roll out from behind La Maroma
one bolt of lightning after another slashes the sky
in the split between heaven and earth

between mountain and flatland
flash upon flash upon flash
followed by ear-splitting claps of thunder.

Halfway up the mountain, the rain turns into hail
hail the size of a Danish one crown coin hurtles down from the sky
I don’t know why
but I immediately think of the Ten Plagues
this is the punishment
I think 
the punishment for my anger      my desire to destroy
my lack of will             my lack of courage
this is the punishment
I think
I am not allowed to die
instead God ordains rock-like hail
instead He sends hail hammering down around my head
I am to be hammered right into Hell by the hail
the mortifications are clearly not over yet.

translated from the Danish by Sheila Nyholm D'Souza

Read the original in Danish

Listen to an excerpt of the original Danish read by the poet:

Moloch: A Story of My Rage is a book-length narrative poem, first published in Danish in 2020, that challenges boundaries and tests expectations of what and how things can be said. The poem moves back and forth in time and place, alternating rage-fuelled bicycle rides in the mountains of Spain with tender, backward glances at family life in Denmark and Germany. The result is kinetic, a work in which intimacy and fury exist on the same page. 

Søren R. Fauth is a prolific translator from German into Danish and a well-known author and professor in Denmark. His mastery of rhythm and register is evident throughout Moloch, but what drives the poem is his uncanny ability to capture an emotion. Jealousy, anxiety, love, joy—blockbuster feelings that often resist capture in words—are rendered here with such immediacy that the reader shifts from shedding sympathetic tears on one page to shrinking back from the violence of the next. One of the challenges, and pleasures, of translating Moloch lay in following these abrupt shifts and getting the poem’s vulnerability or sarcasm to sound as fluid in English as it does in Danish. 

The figure of Moloch—an Old Testament demon who demanded child sacrifice—is used in the poem as a way to grapple with infidelity, jealousy, and the subsequent breakdown of a family. Yet the poem is not just stylistic devices or mythic references; it is an exposé of male rage, a diary left open to show that rage is more than simply outward aggression. Translating this text raised questions for me about proximity and distance: how closely should I follow a voice that is diaristic and volatile?  

Caught up in the narrative, I stayed close and generally found there was a smooth flow from Danish to English. In places where I found myself challenged, rhythm and momentum guided my choices, even where that meant giving up some precision, so that I could preserve the emotional force. Where the Danish is ambiguous or a neologism—a phrase such as døde dage, for example—I chose to keep an openness that allows for interpretation. Rather than smoothing things out, I wanted to follow the poem’s movement, knowing its shifts and fractures are integral to its meaning. I hope that the English translation invites readers into the same disquieting intimacy that characterizes the original.

Søren R. Fauth is a lyricist, translator, dramatist, literary scholar, and professor. He is the author of ten books of poetry, including the long-form poems Digt om døden. En bog om min far (A Poem on Death: A Book about My Father; Vandkunsten, 2018), Moloch. En fortælling om mit raseri (Moloch: A Story of My Rage; Vandkunsten, 2020), En rejse til mørkets begyndelse (A Journey to the Beginning of Darkness; Turbine, 2022), and Dagene, drømmene (The Days, The Dreams; Turbine, 2023). Fauth’s plays have been developed in collaboration with The Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. In 2021, he was awarded the Jan Sonnergaard Memorial Grant in support of his artistic pursuits. Fauth has also written five monographs on, among others, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, and the German author Wilhelm Raabe. He has translated more than twenty books from German to Danish, including twelve books by the Austrian author Thomas Bernhard and Schopenhauer’s magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation. Fauth has published more than two hundred articles on German intellectual life and literature in Danish and international journals. In 2023, he was awarded the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in recognition of his broader contributions to literature and philosophy.

Sheila Nyholm D'Souza is an emerging literary translator working from Danish into English. Raised in Canada speaking both English and Danish, she spent most of her childhood summers in Denmark, and she is delighted to bring together her lifelong ties to Danish language and culture through literary translation. In 2025, she was honored to receive the Leif and Inger Sjöberg Prize from the American-Scandinavian Foundation for her translation of excerpts from Søren R. Fauth’s Moloch: A Story of My Rage. She received a bursary to attend the British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School at the University of East Anglia and was a selected participant in a literary translators’ visiting program organized by the Danish Arts Foundation, also in 2025. She holds graduate degrees in East Asian studies from Sogang University in Seoul and the University of Oxford.