Black crosses
in white snow
stooped in rain, awry.
Here came the dead
over the thorny moor
with their crosses
over their shoulders
and laid them by
and went to rest
under each icy tussock.
.
Olav H. Hauge
(1908 – 1994)
from
“Leaf-Huts and Snow-Houses”
(translated by Robin Fulton)
Olav Håkonson Hauge (18 August 1908 – 23 May 1994) was a Norwegian poet. He was born in Ulvik and lived his whole life there, working as a gardener in his own orchard. Aside from writing his own poems, he was internationally oriented, and translated poems by Alfred Tennyson, William Butler Yeats, Robert Browning, Bertolt Brecht and Robert Bly to Norwegian.
