Sunday 13 October 2024

Lars Gustafsson: 'Etyder' (II)


 

II.

 

Fragment

 

Hörende at five o’clock in the morning.

Mist. Sound of a sea bird.

Afternoon and a cunning adder

disappears in the house foundation

The thunder increases as if it were a fact.

 

 

Hiding place in the homeland

 

Two birds above the burnt forest

Strange red-headed woman

Offered peewit’s eggs in a clearing

Curiously shaped key

handed over by a fairy in pink boots.

 

This small key can open your heart

I will keep it safe 

And the large old trees

those that survived down by the shore

Breathe in the wind – they whisper:

 

“Is it the age of the key now?”

 

 

Delivery


Sleep –

spotless delivery van,

which with its desolate 

punctuality

lets me out

at four o’clock 

at the stop of the new night.

 

 

Old calendar in the window of the summer house


Calendars,

you faithless witnesses of time!

How little you are able to tell

Of plums that have lain

far too long in the grass 

Of boiled crayfish, just 

lifted out of the dill-scented water

Of winter’s first dry squall of snow

that polishes the country lane to glass

Of the clear-felled stretch where the wind once sang. 

O Calendars, 

you faithless witnesses of time!

How quietly 

you settle yourselves

in some drawer only opened 

with some effort, that’s seldom visited!

 

Only recently

you could give rise to dread and hope,

and agitated waiting

at bus stops and in waiting rooms.

And now are half-illegible lines

between pathetically worn-out covers

 

in the writing desk’s bottom drawer

along with a stick of sealing wax

from a long ago Christmas

and one of those discount coupons

that was never made use of –

 

Once so full of promises

 

 

Bookmark


Yellowed bookmark,

In the middle of an old novel,

Found behind another one.

Here Greta Carlson stopped

reading Christmas 1929

Just when the Count of Alba

Had come onto the stage

And the honest gaoler

Realised he had the key

To his son’s prison

 

 

Ramnäs railway community seen from the north

 

Nobody knows what year it is

Perhaps it is a year that has never existed

The road through the railway community

from north to south comprises the following:

Uno Hedlund’s Cycle Repairs

where you can also borrow the phone

The post office with the unhappy lady who

naturally does not cautiously steam open

the station master’s love letters

and read them with mild melancholy eyes

The district medical officer reserved and mulling

over the enigmas of the medieval plagues

in his white palace up there on the hill

The Coop where the yellow buses turn

and where you can even buy kerosene

important for philosophical studies

That is why Fichte and Hegel still

have a faint smell of lamp-kerosene about them

The railway station with Clark Gable as a guard

(‘in this job, let me tell you,

you stand – all the time – with one leg in prison')

And the wonderful brass telegraph:

Trains out

The chemist’s burned down later

the lady there was surly. To turn up there

needing something was an insult

she never forgave. Actually.

After which a bridge over Kilbäcken

a bridge that didn’t mean much

Salholm’s Grocery, the private alternative,

where the ham in the cupboard was always green

and the cheeses sweated like the peat-diggers

who dug on the bog out to the east

In Grocer Salholm’s dense, luxuriant beard

there was always, while he served

the actually rather rare customers,

a lit cigarillo with the brand-name Tärnan

And yet he never caught fire

Here ends Ramnäs railway community

We’ll tell you about the Church Village some other time.

 

 

In praise of summer

 

This day consists purely of small occurrences

Water clatters in the empty bucket

 

A hawk passes but not for us.

The paint on the window sill has peeled more

 

Than recently.

 

And how quietly the wicker chairs seem to talk

to each other on the verandah

 

When everyone has gone inside from there.

 

When everyone has gone in for marinated herring

And the ice-chilled snaps

 

(O.P. Andersson’s brand,

a seventh chord that is dying away,

 

a souvenir from the days of

The late literary author Strindberg,

 

of black steamboat smoke and the clattering

 

of barrows with iron-clad wheels

against a jetty paved with light stones)

 

 

The logonaut


I have spent my life


ordering the letters of the alphabet


in various ways. Dealing and shuffling.


Into a reasonably long string:


a long ski-track across white expanses.


The alphabet in Sweden has twenty-eight letters,

And then the twenty-ninth


the empty letter between the words


Which has no name.


Like Zero it has no value.


That is why it is irreplaceable.

 

 

Beneath the wonderful clouds

 

Eight-minute-old sunlight 

celebrates its childhood here. 

No. Not this one.

But some other

In past daylight.

Garden furniture is shaded

By an extremely old elm

where in the foliage a stubborn song thrush

presents it greetings.

Strawberries in a blue & white bowl

with a century-old crack

are borne out along

with an ice-chilled bottle of

Cederlunds Caloric.

A grandchild goes on and on about a ball.

 

The morning’s rain 

is still hanging in the lilac’s branches. 

A quietly pondering buff-tailed bumblebee

has shifted its 

strangely pedantic activity

into something obscure and vague 

that can only be seen

in glimpses under the garden table

and is searching for this and that there. 

 

Here the amateur film ends.

Striated and short. 

 


Stockholm street

 

Psychosynthesis company

Save our carpets!

 

Who lived here?

Here there once lived a theology student,

 

Johan Sixtus Grenholm

who hailed from Gryta Gård on the plains.

 

He went mad

from studying the Book of Enoch

 

Why precisely the Book of Enoch?

 

 

Draft of a religious memorandum 

 

So God exists

if one is to believe theologians of earlier times

in a state of eternal bliss

and can therefore not be affected

by human suffering.

Now that’s a pity. Otherwise

he could have learnt something

particularly about his own activity.

It’s strange; every time

there has been an earthquake in China

the upper glass-window of the kitchen’s

antique grandfather clock swings open.

 

Seismic sympathy? An occult phenomenon?

Or one of those meaningless gestures

with which the world grimaces

at us,

a nasty, stupid little boy in a playground,

who has to mess with us at any price 

so that we will

take notice of him.

 

This, and nothing else. 

 

 

Out there in the wide open spaces

 

Out there in the wide open spaces

we meet no one.

 

No human creature

or whatever we are to call it,

 

will ever come and visit 

another galaxy.

 

Let millions of years come and go,

win your wars gather in your harvests

 

but to stand somewhere 

on an emerald-blue diamond surface

 

and think:  

“it really feels

completely different

 

here, in this galaxy”

Nothing will come of it.

 

 

Lively snowfall over philosophers’ graves

 

A lively snowfall 

falls like an ironic comment

over past philosophers’ graves

in what is practically 

a continuous winter twilight.

 

One of them was a kind of market-crier

the second was a sway-pole artist

the third kept a look-out on street corners

That era is over now. Here this snowfall thickens.

And these pages lack writing.

 

 

Insomnia

 

Gravitation is the one great curse –

a never-intended deformation of space

caused by the disturbing presence of matter 

Stillness reigns

in pure empty space that never sleeps.

Space, freed from matter,

the still space of the great insomnia



At the graveside of an actor


(Gun Arvidsson 1930-2004)


Berenice in the late 1970s

in Racine’s strange play:

The stage floor is a vast mirror

in which she, gracefully reclining

revels in her own beauty

Her naked legs scissor

back and forth. 

In the rhythm of the alexandrines.

She sees her countenance

looking up from the mirror-world

and it looks mysterious,

as if she were seeing it

for the first time  

It’s a long time ago now 

Full of ambiguities

that age, 

but in its forward sweep

this image survived

and rose from the stone.

I never saw her

on any other stage

than precisely this one 

And my story has no ending

 

Thursday 10 October 2024

Lars Gustafsson: 'Vid en poets grav'


 

Vid en poets grav

 

Mörker drack han

Mörker och tystnad

Ur tystnaden hördes

Dödsurets svaga knäppande

Han andades lugnt

Och såg sig befriad till slut

från plågan att vara en annan

Och fri till slut,

fri att vara ingen och alla

 

 

At a poet’s grave


He drank darkness

Darkness and silence

From the silence the faint clicking

of the death-watch could be heard

He breathed calmly

And finally saw himself freed

from the torment of being someone else

And finally free,

free to be no one and everyone

 

 

Wednesday 9 October 2024

Marc Tritsmans: 'Ecce homo'

 


ECCE НОМО

                      luisterend naar Brahms

 

Ik moet me los spreken, los schrijven

van mezelf, weg uit dit voorlopige

lichaam, uit dit vertrouwde huis

en tijdvak vandaan om te vinden

 

te zien wat eindelijk bevrijd en

zwevend in oneindige ruimte en

tijd van al die liefde en lafheid

van levenshonger en doodsdrift

 

ten slotte van een mens overblijft.

Dit heb ik dus bovengespit en ik leg

het met een bescheiden buiging

 

voor u neer: ziehier de mens zoals

ik hem roepend, kreunend, zingend

zwijgend na een leven lang zoeken vond.

 

Aantekening:

Ecce homo: deze woorden leg ik in de mond van Johannes Brahms.

Dit gedicht schreef ik bij zijn 3e pianokwartet (Opus 60)

 

 

ECCE НОМО

                      listening to Brahms

 

I must talk myself free, write myself free

from myself, away from this provisional

body, out of this familiar house and

timeframe so as to find, to see

 

– at last released and floating

in infinite space and time – what

remains of all the love and cowardice

the hunger for life and death drive;

 

what ultimately remains of a man.

So this is what I have dug up

and I place it with a humble bow

 

at your feet: Behold the Man such as

I found him – calling, groaning, singing,

silent – after my lifetime of searching. 

 

Note:

Ecce Homo: I place these words in the mouth of Johannes Brahms.

I wrote this poem in connection with his 3rd piano quartet (Opus 60)

 

Marie Dauguet: 'L'odorante paix'



L’odorante paix...

 

Pour Henri.

 

Nul bruit, la paix profonde et chaude de midi:

Au bout des champs d’ajoncs, d’acier sur l’or des sables,

La mer s’est tue. A peine un murmure assourdi

Palpite imperceptible aux feuilles des érables.

 

La maison de granit, qui luit comme du sel,

Rêve, les volets clos, sous son lourd toit de chaume;

Rien qu’un branle de rouet dans la cuisine, auquel

Font écho les fredons du rucher. – Tout embaume,

 

Le jasmin de la porte et les fruits du verger,

Les roses effeuillant parmi l’herbe fauchée,

Les brugnons mûrissant au long des espaliers

Et, dans un coin, la menthe et l’anis par torchées.

 

Tout embaume en silence, et les touffes de buis,

Et les œillets, là-haut, garnissant la faîtière,

Et l’eau sombre qui dort au gouffre du vieux puits,

Où tremble un peu d’argent, entre deux brins de lierre.

 

S’arrêtant par moments à l’ombre des pommiers,

Seule erre lentement la très vieille servante,

Reflétant la lumière à son clair tablier,

Oisive, spectre doux dans la paix odorante.

 

Car comment travailler à quatre-vingt-dix ans?

Son maigre corps chancelle et son regard se voile,

Mais ses yeux ont gardé un sourire d’enfant,

Candides à l’abri de la coiffe de toile.

 

Son cœur reste ingénu, cœur d’ange ou de bon chien,

Qui met un rayon tiède aux rides du visage,

Et le verger l’entoure, affectueux gardien,

L’effleure, caressant, de ses souples branchages,

 

Pendant qu’un chapelet au bout de ses doigts secs,

Tout contractés encore des antiques besognes,

Ne sachant pas un mot de français, sans vergogne,

Elle va, tutoyant La Vierge en brézonnec.

 

 (There are two types of gorse, one known as ajonc de Bretagne or lan brézonnec. Marie Dauguet was possibly familiar with the word brézonnec from her knowledge of plant life. The Celtic language of Brittany is called Breton.)

 

 

The fragrant peace...

 

For Henri

 

No sound, profound and warm the noonday peace:

Beyond the fields of gorse, of steel on sands of gold,

The sea has fallen silent. In the maple trees

A muffled fluttering of leaves that scarce takes hold.

 

The house of granite, salt-like in its gleaming blur,

Dreams beneath thick-thatched roof, behind closed shutters pent,

With just a kitchen spinning wheel’s insistent whirr,

Echoed by humming from the beehive. – All is scent:

 

The jasmine at the door, the orchard fruit that sways,

The roses in scythed grass soon losing all their leaves,

The ripening nectarines along espaliers

And, in a corner, flares of mint and aniseed.

 

All perfumes silently, and box-tree tufts, as well

As the carnations that adorn the roof’s high ridge,

And sombre water, sleeping deep within the well,

Where silver traces tremble midst two ivy sprigs.

 

Halting at times there in the apple trees’ long shade,

Alone and slowly roaming, the old servant maid,

Her apron bathed in bright reflecting light, at ease,

A gentle spectre idling in the fragrant peace.

 

For, at the age of ninety, what work can one do?

Her skinny body teeters and her look is dim,

Her eyes, though, still retain a childlike smile that’s new,

Naive, since sheltered by her canvas bonnet’s brim.

 

Her heart is pure, that of an angel or a hound,

Adding a touch of warmth to features deeply lined;

And, attentive guardian, the orchard all around,

Strokes and caresses her with branches soft and kind,

 

While at worn finger-tips she holds a rosary,

Her hands become quite stiff from tasks performed while young,

And knowing not a word of French, she shamelessly

Chats with the Virgin Mary in the Breton tongue.