Ballad
on the paths in Västmanland
Beneath the visible
writing of small roads,
gravelled roads, farm
tracks, often with a comb
of grass in the middle
between deep wheel ruts,
hidden beneath
clear-felling’s tangle of brushwood,
still legible in the
dried-up moss,
there is another
script: the old paths.
They go from lake to
lake, from valley
to valley. At times
they deepen,
become quite distinct,
and large bridges
of medieval stone
carry them over black streams
at times they are
dissipated over bare flat rocks,
one easily loses them
in marshy ground, so
imperceptible that at
one moment they are there,
the next not. There is
a continuation,
there is always a
continuation, as long as
one looks for it, these
paths are persistent,
they know what they
want and with their knowledge
they combine
considerable cunning.
You walk eastwards, the
compass persistently shows east,
the path faithfully
follows the compass, like a straight line,
everything is in order,
then the path swings northwards.
In the north lies
nothing. What does the path want now?
Soon you come to a
huge bog, and the path knew that.
It leads us around,
with the reassurance of one
who has been this way
before. It knows where the bog lies,
it knows where the rockface
gets far too steep, it knows
what happens when it
goes north instead of south
of the lake. It has
done all of this
so many times
previously. That is the whole point
of being a path. That
it has been done
before. Who made the
path? Charcoal burners, fishermen,
women with skinny arms
collecting firewood?
Outlaws, timid and
grey as the moss,
still in their dream
with the fratricide blood
on their hands. Autumnal
hunters in the wake
of trusty foxhounds
with their frost-clear bark?
All and none of them.
We make it together,
you too make it on a
windy day when
it is early or late on
the earth:
We write the paths,
and the paths remain,
and the paths are
wiser than we are,
and know all we wanted
to know.