Rolf Jacobsen (1907 - 1994) : "Cobalt"

Colors are words' little sisters. They can't become soldiers.

I've loved them secretly for a long time.

They have to stay home and hang up the sheer curtains

in our ordinary bedroom, kitchen and alcove.


I'm very close to young Crimson, and brown Sienna

but even closer to thoughtful Cobalt with her distant eyes and

         untrampled spirit.

She walk in dew.

The night sky and the southern oceans

are her possessions

and a tear-shaped pendant on her forehead:

the pearls of Cassiopeia.

We walk in dew on late nights.


But the others.

Meet them on a June morning at four o'clock

when they come rushing toward you,

on your way to a morning swim in the green cove's spray.

When you can sunbathe with them on the smooth rocks.

              -Which one will you make yours?






From: Czeslaw Milosz - A Book of Luminous Things
           An International Anthology of Poetry

Translated from the Norwegian by Roger Greenwald
Harcourt Brace & Company, 1996