Five sonnets by Lars Gustafsson

Sonnet XIV

Lonely shoal that the same uncertain wave

constantly washes with the same short beat.

Anxiously leaning buoy, the same gull’s seat

day after day, beneath low skies that gave

off humidity and heat! And I gazed:

Eternity’s long been in motion here,

I should have seen it, for the law is clear,

relentless, that applies – each wave thus phased

proves the same thesis, and I should recall

just how it was, though can recall no more,

which makes this gull so crucial. Its beak’s caught

outlined against the waves. Scared its calm or

stubbornness might overcome me, both all

too great, across the waves my eyes still sought.

Sonnet XVII

Autumnal storm, warm wind. The moon obscured by trees.

A table, the boy just made out, dim from birth,

that scrapes the last drops from the bowl. This earth.

This warm wind. And now carried on this breeze

from a darkening lake a raw scent as of a

drowned man not recovered. And I, conferred

to be alive, walk through the grass. The selfsame word

for that autumnal water scent, the moon that hovers

anxiously on watch, and then the night that goes

on growing, the yellow light that lights a small square

of a courtyard, moist earth that has a scent

of rotting pears, the cat up on its toes

that slyly sneaks through shrubbery. And there

came no rain. That word would have been heaven-sent.

Sonnet XXIV

I know something about you you don’t know,

You are a dog. In frosty autumn earth

you’re digging for a hidden bumblebee. A word

for this could be a ‘truth affliction’. I know:

minus ‘truth’. Minus ‘affliction’. Secretly

we envy animals for this: there is no word

that captures what they do. Just as deferred

the outcome, wordless, with no uncertainty

through that thin body a fierce struggle streams.

You are a dog. The faint and stubborn sound

that leads you is an insect. And you don’t know

that you will die. Outer events it seems

All coincide. The same faint stubborn sound.

You know something about me I don’t know.

Sonnet XXVII

To one below the surface of the ice

the ice itself looks as if something white

and openings and wind wells where still quite

open water moves, look, if there’s a slice

of daylight left, as if expanses fraught

with darkness. And only he who knows aright

an exit lies in what is dark, that white

means darkness (that ice can so distort

conditions as they’re pictured by the eye)

and who, against his instinct, swims away

from light towards the dark sees day again.

There is, once a small habit stirs, or by

a word that changes meaning, a chance, though stray,

of someone getting out. That he sees day again.

Sonnet XXVIII

It’s late in coming. It had far to go.

There is no name for it but it’s called grief.

A clenched fist is no more than a frail sheaf

of brittle fingerbones – it’s hard to know

one’s weakness properly. And very few

can view their weakness as a strong safe lair.

One stands on some huge Gustav Adolf square

and sees oneself forsaken. It’s hard too

to cross a square like that. A hand that lies

open’s nearly always empty. And a cage

where no bird’s ever lived can easily

convey confusion. By what right do we

disdain a freedom that by nature, stage

by stage, would loosen cautiously all ties?