A poem from 'Rib Cities' by the Swedish writer Eva Ström

To let your pen write on

So delightful to scribble on paper

let your pen write on without stopping to think

enjoy the strokes, the black on the white

neither thinking nor not thinking

just let your hand and thought run on

abreast for a while, out of step for a while

then the hand runs ahead of the thought

then the thought runs ahead of the hand

then they run abreast

then they get tired

a hare zigzagged across the fields

in the colours of last year’s leafs at first invisible

then he became a shadow

gained outline and being

until once more he was swallowed up by

the dusk-grey colour of the land

so delightful to scribble on paper

let something, anything

emerge from the grey

like the hare

without any warning

rush off unknown in a direction one does not

understand

be swallowed up

disappear

while the house found shelter from the north wind

where it crouched behind the mountain

pressed down by the fist of the oak

it even shook in squalls

the swans mated hissing

galloping over the surface of the water

took over clattering with outstretched wings

but the hare with its lonely brown eye

and the pen that runs over the paper

in the singing wood of the tiled stoves

runs and runs

comes to a halt

stops

gets itself ready for the night

like an animal

just stops

flattens a circle

and goes to sleep