Tuesday 18 April 2017

Poem from Katarina Frostenson's 'Sånger och formler' (2015)


Song, turn

There is a season we sang
to everything
turn, turn, turn
there is a season
how true it was
we danced

like an ark rocks, a large bird of the puffin species
flapping, falling
heaving itself upward, onward, once more
heavy and glad

it was
The Byrds
that was then, and we didn’t realise it was Ecclesiastes’ words
recurring
of how to everything there is a season, now we know

and have almost forgotten those unbridled steps but
some of it still takes your heart
like the words and the notes Turn!
Turn! Turn!

in this time of sown despair
time disappearing
life running out
falls in the dance
                      yes say turn
thought takes place – that which happens

and then it was Dylan’s diction
which went through everything
which is half of it, or almost all
intonation
a voice’s reefs and rocks
how it sliced through
from some other place, and here
dug out tunnels and rooms, deep down and high
up among the clouds
                                           blowing in the wind

                                               at the world’s end

so drill voice, you can pass
through rock
you are a wave just like that

the song is a ghost
a double track from Solbacken, high above lake Helgasjön
spread out thy mighty wings lord*

while I was writing a flock of birds came and took everything on the slope
every single pallid unripe fruit, in a lightning invasion, and was gone
no matter, it will all
grow again
in due season, as the song always does

Starling with blue berry in beak


Katarina Frostenson

(* 'Bred dina vida vingar' - hymn written in 1860 by Linda Sandell)



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