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Café Borges

In Café Borges on Bankastræti
everyone has brown
eyes.

Here they once sold pantyhose–
says Simone–that forked like paths
in two, even three.

Yes–says Tiziano–lovers fought here
until someone laid a
sword
between them, naked.

Fires are burning.

In Café Borges on Bankastræti
everyone has stubble and a smile.
You have the widows and the widowers
who slurp soup spiced with Fáfnir’s-grass
and add in adages
with forks
that fork like pantyhose.
At a corner table a man in a turtleneck snores.

Up and down the hill the dead pass, patting the café wall.

I am married to the owner. We have four children.

© Sigurbjorg Þrastardottir. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2011 by T. Zachary Cotler. All rights reserved.

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Poetry From the October 2011 issue: Writing from Iceland

Sigurbjorg ÞrastardottirSigurbjorg Þrastardottir

Sigurbjorg Þrastardottir is a poet, playwright, and novelist in Reykjavik. Her debut collection of poetry, Blálogaland (Land of Blue Flames) was published in spring 1999, followed the year after by Hnattflug (Circumnavigation), which was voted best poetry book of the season by staff-members of Icelandic bookstores, and then in 2007 by Blysfarir (Torch Marches), which was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize. Her first novel, Sólar saga (The Story of Sun), received the Tomas Gudmundsson Literary Prize 2002. The prize is granted every other year by the Mayor of Reykjavik. Þrastardottir’s poetry has been translated into several languages and published in Germany, Sweden, and Italy. A bilingual collection of her poems in Icelandic and English (translated by Bernard Scudder), To bleed straight, was published by Forlagið in 2008. Her newest book of poems, Brúður (Bride/Dolls), was published in 2010.

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Translated from IcelandicIcelandic by T. Zachary CotlerT. Zachary Cotler

T. Zachary Cotler is the author of House with a Dark Sky Roof (Salt, 2011). His poems have appeared in Poetry, the Paris Review, Republic of Letters, the Wolf, and other magazines in the US and UK. In 2006, he was awarded the Amy Clampitt Fellowship by the poet’s estate. In 2011, he received the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He is a founding editor of the Winter Anthology.

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