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)