Ice rose

So fast you flowered!
No one discovered you before
you had unfolded.
First we saw you
as weed
rather than what we would prefer to see.

Now you stand there, supreme:
no stalk, no root,
your soul taken straight out of the air
or from the reality behind you.
When we stare at you,
you don't mind.

You yourself are enough.
You have understood
that with your six crystal arms
twisted backwards,
you can embrace the cold.
The cold you can trust.

With colourless petals
the fruit a diamond
and nodes of the brightest kind,
you get to eat from the cold one more time
entangling your fingers into
your sister's cracked, white hair.

Like a baroque rosebush
drawn by no one,
we see you flowering, unruly
back to front, down and up.
The sun, an abyss.
Sibir, your exile.

While we, at the window
this last day of March,
hand resting midway
in the morning paper, may feel such a need
to hold on to you, firmly,
before the long summer, Sahara.

Translation: May-Brit Akerholt