Bokelskere.no

Hvordan jorden ble til

I de fjerneste tider var bare himlen. Men en dag skjedde et voldsomt steinskred. En mengde stein, grus og jord falt ut av himlen. Det ble Jorden. Av Jorden oppsto menneskene. I begynnelsen var et dypt mørke, og menneskene måtte lete etter mat på søppeldyngene utenfor husene sine. Livet var uten glede, og folk kjente ikke til døden.
En dag ropte en gammel kone: «Gi oss lyset!» og likevel visste hun ikke hva lyset var. Da kom lyset, og folk så hvor vakker Jorden var. Menneskene kunne nå dra ut på herlige reiser og finne nye boplasser. Likevel manglet noe som kunne gjøre gleden over livet på Jorden fullbrakt.
Da ropte en gammel kone: «Gi oss døden!» - og hun ropte det uten å vite hva døden var. Således fikk man døden. Og med døden kom også gleden over livet til menneskene. Diktning, sang og fest, liv og død, sorg og glede, lys og mørke har siden vekslet.

Gammelt eskimosagn

Dikt fra Grønland
Ved Harald Sverdrup

Den Norske Bokklubben - 1977

Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
list of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I began again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Words Under the Words
Selected Poems

No Explosions

To enjoy
fireworks
you would have
to have lived
a different kind
of life

Naomi Shihab Nye

The Tiny Journalist
Poems

Gaza Notebook
(2021-2023)

At fifth grade, I visit the school library.
On a wall by the door, a poster claims,
«If you read books, you live more than one
life.»
Now I’m thirty and whenever I look at faces
around me, old or young, on each forehead I
read:
«If you live in Gaza, you die several
times.

Mosab Abu Toha

Verset er hentet fra diktet Gaza Notebook (2021-2023)

Forest of Noise
poems

Alfred A. Knope, New York - 2024

«You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once - there has to be a limit.

Edward Said (1935-2003)

Gripende dikt - ord blir overflødige.

Everything in Our World Did Not Seem to Fit

Once they started invading us, taking our
houses
and trees, drawing lines, pushing us into
tiny places.
It wasn’t a bargain or deal or even a real war.
To this day they pretend it was.
But it was something else.
We were sorry what happened to them but
we had nothing to do with it.
You don’t think what a little plot of land
means
till someone takes it and you can’t go back.
Your feet still want to walk there.
Now you are drifting worse
than homeless dust, very lost feeling.
I cried even to think of our hallway,
cool stone passage inside the door.
Nothing would fit for years.
They came with guns, uniforms, declarations.
Life magazine said,
«It was surprising to find some Arabs still in
their houses.»
Surprising? Where else would we be?
Up on the hillsides?
Conversing with mint and sheep, digging
in dirt?
Why was someone else’s need for a home
greater than our own need for our own
homes
we were already living in? No one has ever
been able
to explain this sufficiently. But they find
a lot of other things to talk about.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Everything Comes Next
Collected & New Poems

Tomorrow I’ll Write

At night he says: «Tomorrow. I’ll write,»
but there’s nothing at all to back up his
words;
the heavens’ frost laughs in his face,
and the cackling of mocking ice is heard.

Don’t pride yourself on tomorrow’s prize -
when you have no notion of what it hides.

Shemtov Ardutiel, 14th century

Hymns & Qualms,
New and Selected Poems and Translations
By Peter Cole

Nissen på lasset

Han
ligg
som eit vasslik
og ulmar
under overflata
eksen min.
Når som helst kan han flyte opp.
Eg veit ikkje kva ein gjer med vasslik.
Hadde håpa at bitterheita
skulle løyse han heilt opp.

Kari Anne Bye

Eg bur her no

I dag ryddet jeg i noen papirer - da fant jeg dette diktet som ett av mine barnebarn skrev etter sitt første møte med norsk vinter.

Norway

Norway, Norway
High, high
High all the way
up to the sky
Cold sunny
Mostly cold
Norway.

By Aida,
6 years old

Bibliomania
Bibliomania, the passionate desire to handle, possess, and accumulate books, has been the subject of warnings by many writers, mostly those who have been touched by it themselves. Others, however, have defended it on the grounds that, since as one grows older one’s level of insanity inevitably increases, it is best to adopt one of the more liberal forms of madness such as obsession with books.

Joh Michell

Bibliomaniacs
A Passion for Books - Random House -1999

Bibliolexicon

Bibliobibule
One who reads too much

Biblioclast
One who tears pages from or otherwise destroys books

Bibliodemon
A book fiend or demon.

Bibliognoste
One who is knowledgeable about editions, colophons, printers, and all the minutiae of books

Bibliographe
One who describes books

Biblioklept
One who steals books

Bibliolater
One who worships books

Bibliolestes
A book robber or plunderer

Bibliomancer
One who practices divination by books

Bibliomane
One who accumulates books indiscriminately

Bibliomaniac
A book lover gone mad

Bibliophage
One who eats or devours books

Bibliophile
One who loves books

Bibliophobe
One who fears books

Bibliopole
One who sells books

Biblioriptos
One who throws books around

Bibliosopher
One who gains wisdom from books

Bibliotaphe
One who buries or hides books

Kilde:A Passion for Books - Random House - 1999

Et innholdsrikt og vakkert ord!

Tsundoku
I Japan har de et eget ord for «hoarding» books.
The term Tsundoku combines the words tsunde meaning to stack things, oku which means to leave for a while, and doku reading. So, Tsundoku is basically when you get books and just let them stack up without actually reading them.

Såpass - til nye høyder!! Da må jeg kanskje åpne opp for nye inntrykk! :))

What Do Palestinians Want?
A man in the Lake District, England, asked me ………..

The pleasure of tending, tending
something that will not be taken away.
A family, a tree, growing for so long,
finally fruiting olives, the benevolence of
branch,
and not to find a chopped trunk upon
return.

Confidence in a threshold. A little green.
And quite a modest green untouched by
drama.
Or a mound of calico coverlets stuffed with
wool,
from one’s own sheep, piled in a cupboard.
To find them still piled. Is that too much?

Not to dominate. Never to say we are the
only people who count,
or to be the only victims,
the chosen, more holy or precious.
No. Just to be ones who matter
as much as any other, in a common way, as
you might prefer.
Stones and books and daily freedom.
A little neighborly respect.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Voices in the Air - Poems for Listeners

Karl-Bertil Jonsson er ikke en del av julen min i dag, men jeg minnes julestemningen han skapte hos store og små på 1970-tallet. Den godhjerta Karl-Bertil gikk rett hjem hos mange av oss. Det er stas å høre ar Karl-Bertil er blitt en del av juletradisjonen din!
Jeg har ikke sett filmen fra 2021, vet heller ikke om jeg skal. For gamle damer som meg lever historien og nostalgien best uten nye inntrykk.:)

Jeg har foreslått boken eller filmen Historien om Karl-Bertil Jonssons julaften av Tage Danielson og Per Åhlin flere ganger tidligere - og gjør det gjerne igjen.

Det var en gang for lenge siden, den gang man ennå kunne se fattige mennesker gå omkring i gatene. På den tiden var det ingen skam å være fattig ………..

Karl-Bertil Jonsson er 14 år, kommer fra et velstående hjem, han har en velutviklet samvittighet, han tenker som Robin Hood, og i førjulstida har han ekstrajobb på postkontorets pakkeavdeling.

Mer nostalgisk og «julete» blir ikke julen for meg. :)

Emily

What would you do if you knew
that even during wartime
scholars in Baghdad
were translating your poems
into Arabic
still believing
in the thing with feathers?

You wouldn’t feel lonely
That’s for sure.

Words finding friends
even if written on envelope flaps
or left in a drawer.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Voices in the Air - Poems for Listeners