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I'm sure that many of you wonder what a grook actually is. I discovered these extraordinary short poems
on the internet (thanks to a fellow translator on ProZ) and wanted to share them with anybody who happened by my page. Enjoy!
A Grook is a short aphoristic poem accompanied by an appropriate drawing, revealing in a minimum of
words and with a minimum of lines some basic truth about the human condition.
Grooks were created originally during the
Nazi occupation of Denmark. They began as a sort of underground language just out of reach of the Germans' understanding.
They have since become one of the most widely read forms of composition in the Scandinavian and English languages.
Grooks are the product of Piet Hein- a Danish scientist turned poet. Piet Hein has
published poems, fiction, drama and essays. He also designed the famous "rectangular oval" known as the Super-Ellipse. The
shape has been used for table-tops (perfect for seating as many as possible around a table!) and in the Stockholm City Center.
Piet Hein wrote a most fitting description of Danes and Danishness in the following Grook:
Denmark seen from a foreign land
looks but like a grain of sand.
Denmark as we Danes conceive
it
is so big you won’t believe it.
Enjoy a few more of Piet Hein's Grooks...
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MANKIND
Men,
said the Devil,
are good to their brothers:
they don’t want to mend
their own ways, but each others.
THOSE WHO KNOW
Those who always
know what’s best
are
a universal pest.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL TIP
Whenever
you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll
find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively
standing moping:
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping.
NAIVE
Naive
you are
if you believe
life favours those
who aren't naive.
SATURATION
The heavens are draining,
it’s raining and raining,
and
everything couldn’t be wetter,
and things are so bad
that we ought to be glad:
because now they can only get
better.
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ON BEING ONESELF
Good
resolution grook
If virtue
can't be mine alone
at least my faults
can be my own.
ARS BREVIS
There is
one art,
no more,
no less:
to do
all things
with art-
lessness
WANTING TO BE ABLE TO
'Impossibilities' are good
not to
attach that label to;
since, correctly understood,
if we wanted to, we would
be able to be able to.
WHAT LOVE IS LIKE
Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable
THE
ROAD TO WISDOM
The road to wisdom?
- Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.
LIVING IS -
Living is
a thing you do
now or never -
which
do you?
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Copyright ã 2002-2003, Narcisa Grecu * Bucharest * Romania
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