Helga Novak

For the past several years, I have been slowly translating the work of a magnificent and strange German-Icelandic poet named Helga Novak. She passed away on December 24th last year. I read a few of my translations for the Bold Italic microhood celebration in Dog Patch a while back and it was captured by the folks at Litseen, so you can view it here. And you can read one of my translations from her first collection below.

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Packing Herring
~ Helga Novak

The herring is decapitated and boned. The fillets are as big as a face, even folded together. I bend them up, I press them flat, I pack them. The silver-blue backs belong facing down. The light brown flesh goes up.

I pack the herring in cartons – two forearms long, one forearm wide. I weigh them
out. A package holds ten kilos.

Fish oil the color of old gold collects on the table. The yellow flecks on the backs
of the herring, they blind. They stick in the eyes.

The time does not go by.

Outside, a storm.

Bending the herring up, pressing it flat, packing it, weighing it out. My underarms are
studded with glittering scales. They stick like Scotch tape and leave small
circles behind.

If one doesn’t think of the hour, the time passes.

The storm cries, whines, shrieks. It takes the bars from the windows and pulls the
house apart. The cliff opposite the bay is shrouded. I would like to be in the
sun.