Welcoem to posts!!

NOWHERE NOIR - Stories of Little Purpose
Posted 2 months ago

First posting. I made a short about a poem I read every November. I got a comment about it and thought it would be fun to try to translate it. It's written by Kalle Haglund and was originally made for a Spoken word performance and later published in a collection of poems. Originally it's in Swedish. I have not seen it translated before. Hope he doesn't mind me translating it.

Anyhow, here it is.

BLACK PUDDING IN NOVEMBER AND A FEELING OF GUILT
Quarter-to-five news and black pudding, or cod with melted butter.

Cod was cheaper back then. Frozen blocks in blue-and-white packaging – they’re much more expensive today.

But that’s what we got.

Mom would pick me up from daycare. I’d sit on the bike rack, hands slipped into her pockets. Pockets on that orange corduroy jacket from Saffron, which sometimes held proof of eaten chocolate.
We’d stop at the market nook to buy potatoes and fruit.
"Fruit is also candy."
"But not like chocolate."


Even today, the quarter-to-five news gives me shivers. Not because I think someone’s eating chocolate without sharing – it’s more about the time itself, quarter-to-five.


Quarter-to-five. It’s like November in the day’s cycle.
Everyone’s tired, hungry, and soon it’ll be completely dark.

But that’s what we got.

To be at daycare, playing with Hanna and Viktor. They were married, and I was her lover. Hanna and I would sit in the bushes, touching each other carefully while Viktor, in his role as husband, was off at work.

It was, in truth, a subtle form of bullying, and I felt guilt. Guilt toward Viktor. Guilt toward Mom, who couldn’t have a piece of chocolate after work without making me tear up. And somewhere near Ali Baba's cave was a man with a mustache who gassed Kurdish children to death, something the dry voices of the quarter-to-five news never stopped talking about.

And that’s what we got.
Black pudding in November and a feeling of guilt.

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