Steinn Steinarr

Song of Spring

noiseless wing

of dying night

of mind takes hold

my love

no one can know

nor may they witness

my poem

wears the face

of the untold

Steinn Steinarr, born Aðalsteinn Kristmundsson (1908 - 1958) is considered by many to be the finest of all modern Icelandic poets.

Halldór Laxness

she was all you loved

she was all you loved and sought

all you longed for, all you dreamt

you spoke of her in song

you taught her all you loved

I found in your heart’s obscure recess

the beginning of truth, of vision

the aperture of all that is best

in our life, in our light

guiltless, together, we lived

those truths that the world will fuse

from play of leisure bound to end

to the chased faults of pleasure

Halldór Laxness (1902-1998) was the greatest Icelandic novelist of the modern age. He won the nobel prize for literature in 1955.

Gudmundur Bodvarsson

they were thrown upon the sea for such a time

did you see land? did you see land? the cries of night

the black gravedigging about the ship

not a sound, but water and the waves in lull

washing up on bridge and bow

pathless deep about their sides

and the wind pretends to sleep?

where the land?

I see land!

he’s seen land! the mob chants

into night they gaze

and eaglewinged there comes aboard

the buoyant word

there is noise and contest

there is laughter and motion

there is screaming and gesture

the shouts and cries die

but the mob finds no peace

did they see the land? then where?

the noise dead

hollow without retort

the youngest voice

where are we? what noise?

I see no land

again, again

the silence lanced by a solitary voice

I see no land

the noise dead

remains of waste remains

it was night

there is no land

Guðmundur Böðvarsson (1904 – 1974) was an Icelandic poet, renowned for his fusion of rural themes in the modernist veracular.