The beauty I have sought until now was the springboard’s
rocking.
The wisdom I have believed in until now was
the cowardice of the diver.
But the one waiting for reconciliation is
one unreconciled.
The one wanting salvation is already
damned.
Denial? No, the deepest faith,
that which only can be gained when one
believes nothing,
that which can only be owned when one
knows:
I am not lying, there is no lying in me
and the truth is far from me (I am far from
myself).
I abandon myself
like the last rat abandons a sinking ship,
a burning wreck of which the depths gets
their part
when
the heights have got theirs,
(you have been weighed and found partly
light, partly heavy),
one shipwrecked who floats on what is dark
and form-shifting,
attracted and irradiated by the star of the
mysterious struggle,
the star that unseen is mightier than sun
and moon,
which simultaneously is single and double,
dark and light,
simultaneously! Not in turns.
Life is a meeting of contrasts,
life is neither of the parties.
Life is neither day nor night
but dawn and dusk.
Life is neither an evil nor a good,
it is the grist between the stones.
Like is neither the dragon’s nor knight’s
battle,
it is the maiden.
And no one is to come to me with the
dragon’s hunger
and
evil
And no one is to come to me with the
knight’s chivalry,
though the legends lie so beautifully!
And no one is to come to me with the maiden’s
trust and hope,
for the battle goes on for ever
and the one who will lose life
is not the dragon
and not the knight
but always the maiden.
Gunnar Ekelöf is the poet
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