Midsummer Night's Light

Midsummer Night isn't a proper night,
there's a lunacy in it, ice around the heart
from a dread deep in the woods somewhere,
someone who wants to scream but can't get a word out.

The song thrush's crazy warble
thirsts for salvation but cannot get it.
The light is full of someone's longing to weep in it,
he's left his flowers behind on the ground
and is hiding his white face in his hands.

The light of Midsummer Night
screeches beyond the woods and across the lake-ice
like the glittering eyes of a madman
who climbed and climbed dizzily through sun
and the flowers' perfume, but first senses tonight
in this hour in the lust of his flesh
that he is one of death's tribe.


by Rolf Jacobsen from North In The World

Moonlight, 1895
Edvard Munch
Norwegian, 1863-1944