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Poetry on the…milk carton?

Well, there’s no underground in Reykjavík (the tracks would probably melt), but I’ve found I can get poetry with my breakfast – it’s on the milk cartons, in fact. So I pour extra milk on my muesli now so I can go out, buy another carton, and see what the next poem is going to be. This is the 1.5% fat milk, by the way; I’ve yet to find out if you get a poetic freebie with skimmed and full-fat too.

Here’s my translation…looks like it’s by Birgir Valdimarsson, a 13-year-old, so maybe the poems are all by schoolchildren:

I am only me

I am a little star shining
on the starry sky.

I am a little flower
in the garden of the universe.

I am a little grain of sand
lying on the beach.

I am only a little human being
just a spot on the earth.

Ah yes, it’s going to be one of those metaphysical days…


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This entry was posted by Robin Vaughan-Williams on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 11:43 and is filed under Iceland, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Poetry on the…milk carton?”

  1. fragmented thoughts and unexpected collisions (open mic at the Nýhil International Poetry Festival) « zqblog says:
    20 August 2009 at 11:39

    […] rap (the kind where the words are forced into a rhythm, rather than written with rhythm in them), a poem from the milk carton, one neurotic piece that reminded me of the landlady from hell we narrowly escaped committing to a […]

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