Another poem by Lars Gustafsson

Aimlessly wandering in a landscape

that is quickly growing dark and changing

The grass of December is as brittle as glass

and readily splinters underfoot.

It is intolerably late to live in December:

darkness, dilapidated barns, rusting implements

fruit-trees being eaten by moss, this patient decay

that we naturally associate with the countryside

and that gives you a sudden pain in the midriff

the moment you realise that what you are seeing

is an image of the future, of the life of the unborn

just as much as of the past and of the dead.

Ever narrower the strip becomes that divides them.

Ever easier to see that we too are meaningless.

The large white winter hares streak across the fields.

Ever more quickly man’s image is erased.

It is time to go home.

But we are already home.