Thursday 3 March 2011

New poem for his latest collection by the Swedish writer Lars Gustafsson


All iron longs to become rust,
said the old metallurgist

It wants to unite with the air
sink down to the bed of lakes

Become red earth. Not only iron
longs for its disintegration.

Utopias subside powerlessly
and become rhetoric. Even

proud monotheism rusts
away and becomes pleasantly

teeming amoral
polytheism. Sharp blades

gleaming swords and heavy axes
never last eternally.

All iron strives to become rust.
Said the old metallurgist.



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