A poem by the Swedish writer Werner Aspenström (1918-1997)

You and me and the world

Don’t ask who you are and who I am

and why everything exists.

Let professors go into that,

they’re paid for it.

Place the kitchen scales on the table

and let reality weigh itself.

Slip on your coat.

Switch off the hall light.

Shut the door.

Let the dead embalm the dead.

Here we are walking.

The one in the white wellingtons

is you.

The one in the black wellingtons

is me.

And the rain falling over both of us

is the rain.