Midday Poem by Thoger Larsen

A violent splash of fire against hard blue,
the midday sun stands hot with bristling ray.
The bank of earth’s so powder-grey in hue,
Above the navew insects hum and sway.

The still day stretches out both far and high.
Around me butterflies and midges whirl.
Clear song-notes trickle from the leaves and sky.
In glassy haze the far expanses swirl.
--
Down in the glassy lake with sluggish maw
the fish stands stiff and dull from mouth to tail.
It snuffed its snout now on the sudden shore
and sneezed and flapped down to the deepest dale.

In clearest water it reposes there,
the bubbles from its snout rise on a wire,
it stares up at the glassy surface where
the sun rocks like a jellyfish on fire.
--
A peasant girl sits in a ditch and rests –
with short-sleeved shift and with her brown arms bare.
You glimpse the topmost cleavage of her breasts –
with glistening beads and sun and warm flesh there.

It is so fine and warm near soil and sand.
It is a summer’s day in Denmark’s land.