“LOON”
A clear night in winter and the sky
was so cold it was all the stars could do
to hold their places and twinkle to try to keep warm.
One little star, far to the north, in despair
and fear, lost hope, lost light and height, and fell
to the earth where it lay near death. But a loon found it,
and it called to the others with that strange tremolo cry
that startled the stunned star. Then the loons ascended
in the slow clumsiness of their kind that requires much effort
but gets them at last aloft. If the bird could do it,
the star resolved to try again, and succeeded.
And the loons called out, as if it were one of them.
PRAISE FOR THE CROONING WIND
“A ventriloquist of poetry, Professor Grønkjær is Greenland’s connection to the Anglophone world.”
— EKSTRA BLADET (København)
“[Slavitt’s translations are] witty, energetic, playful, outrageous, yet serious and somber, too.”
— TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
