Vandalism - a translated poem

I am translating poems today... soon I will go on a holiday in the countryside so I am packing all my files and passwords.

This poem was first printed as part of the novel Vandalism by Tom Kristensen. In Danish the word vandalism is hærværk - meaning: the work of armies. The book was published in 1930 and tells the story of a newspaper literary reviewer that slowly, but intentionally gives up his bourgeois life and goes to the dogs in search of meaning... Not that he find any.

When it was published it was seen as a sad key-novel made by an intolerable drunkard - because not only did the main character resemble the author down to the address and the newspaper he worked on - almost all the supporting characters resembled real people - and not in a nice way.

Today it is considered a masterpiece - probably the most important Danish novel of the period.

The poem appears in the book as written by one of the supporting characters - a young poet that has become a proletarian bully to punish his upper class father: Her it is in Danish:

                     Angst

        Asiatisk i vælde er angsten.
        Den er modnet med umodne aar.
        Og jeg føler det dagligt i hjertet,
        som om fastlande dagligt forgaar.

        Men min angst maa forløses i længsel
        og i syner af rædsel og nød.
        Jeg har længtes mod skibskatastrofer
        og mod hærværk og pludselig død.

        Jeg har længtes mod brændende byer
        og mod menneskeracer paa flugt,
        mod opbrud, som ramte alverden,
        og et jordskælv, som kaldtes Guds tugt.

And this is my English translation:

                     Angst

        Asian in might is the angst
        matured during immature years
        and I daily fell in my heart
        as if a continent disappears

        but my angst must redeem into longing
        and in visions of horror and death
        I'm longing for ship disasters
        and for vandals and choking last breath

        I long for metropolis' burning
        and for human races fleeing
        for upheavals that struck the whole world
        for an earthquake called God's decreeing

And here is the poet: