The drunkards, with splendid names
such as Konrad or Adolf, gathered together
on the outskirts of Molde. Sometimes their singing
was borne on the wind to us: old hits
or sad low-church hymns about the cross
and Jesus’ bleeding side. The crazy folk too
wandered around on the outskirts – people like Lundli, who had
once got his intermediary-school diploma: at night, he hewed
and sawed heavy trees, the sound cut its way into the sleep
of us children and got mixed up with dreams
about flying over the housetops or drawing up big fish
from pools with infinite darkening depths
 
One day, his cross finished, Lundli went
slowly at evening in his white sheet along the High Street
with the huge cross slung over his back.
After him followed the drunkards, Konrad, Adolf
and the rest, and then a throng of children: I kept
my fingers tight around the chestnut from the cemetery tree in my pocket.
Lundli called out in his light tenor and falsetto YOU MUST TAKE
UP YOUR CROSS AND FOLLOW ME SAYS THE LORD! His words
flew like fire to Konrad and Adolf, their big
drunkards’ lips replied: “Follow me, says the Lord!
And Hallelujah! And Hallelujah!” Their white hands
danced like wings in the air
 
The pentecostal procession passed the Alexandra Hotel.
In the windows of the wine bar were the pink faces of queers
and elderly divorcees: in his alcoholic stupor, gay
Jens in his checked sailor suit and tie stumbled down the steps
from the hotel and joined in the procession. Old Hansen the
tinsmith, divorced for thirty years, with his heart full
of spittle from his own children, took his time, but
followed him and glided in the crumpled wedding-suit
that was too tight for him, his belly wobbling: he followed
right behind crazy Lundli, who sang FOLLOW ME
FOLLOW ME SAYS THE LORD FOR IT IS NOT THE HEALTHY
WHO NEED THE PHYSICIAN BUT THOSE WHO ARE SICK
OF SIN COME ALL YOU WHO HAVE SINNED and from the
direction of the quay came the clattering steps of skinny old Karen,
whose going price was a pail of beer and who knew
the town’s trouser buttons and zips better than the cheerful
seamstresses: she emerged from the shack and the toilet on the quay
and drifted into the procession
 
Crazy Lundli was almost collapsing
under the enormous cross he had carved out
and assembled in the long dark nights, hammering it
firmly into place with rusty nails left by the German occupation.
From far away came deep rumbles, and lightning cut across the skies:
now the procession glided on to the town square and the clouds amassed
over the heads of the drunkards and crazy folk, children and queers
and divorcees and women of doubtful repute who cried out: “Hallelujah!
Praise the Lord!” as the first raindrops
squirted on to Lundli’s bald pate. The vicar made an appearance
in his black robes, and the police in full uniform
and nurses in white took care of Lundli: they jabbed
syringes into him as he cried through the rain and the wind
PRAISE THE LORD ALL SINNERS FOR HIS GRACE UPON GRACE
TAKE UP THE CROSS AND FOLLOW THE LORD. Then he turned white
and fainted in the ambulance while Konrad and Adolf
held the cross firmly upright in the rainstorm in Molde
 
The vicar in his black gown got up
on Lundli’s margarine crate on the town square: “Go home!”
he commanded, “this is delusion, sickness, indeed
minds gone mad. Jesus did not mean it literally
when he talked about crosses, it was symbolic and
referred to ‘burdens’ as a theoretical concept,” cried the priest
from the crazy man’s crate. Then the heavens burst open
above Molde  and lightning cut a path through the darkness
like a blazing arrow towards the church tower: the bells began
to ring torrential peals, indeed the earth trembled and now the
rain was coming down like Noah’s floodwater. I squelched home
in big boots, taking the shortcut across the cemetery,
snatching up the chestnuts, which flowed in their green shells
from grave to grave
 
and after slices of bread with margarine and syrup
came the night with its dreams to us children
and to crazy folk and sinners: we flew without wings
over the town, mounting steeply like a flock of birds
with crazy Lundli and his cross at our head, rising
up to a heaven where big fish squirmed up
from bottomless depths of darkness