I wrote that I lay naked on the jetty
but not naked beyond all concepts –
the word ‘I’ still remained, a contamination.
The heron that had settled beside me
stood with its head turned away.
Did I not exist in his scheme of things?
The jetty was apparently his, a part of the world
beyond humanity, beyond a ‘now’.
Were we once simultaneous? The question has no answer.
The misty realm
with gleam instead of water
where a heron stands on guard at the border
is of course timeless.
This is a reference to a poem by Hjalmar Gullberg, which appeared in the collection 'Terziner i okonstens tid' (1958), when the poet was 60 years old. His poem is called 'Häger på bryggan' (Heron on the jetty): Jag låg på bryggan naken då en häger/stod ljudlöst, kommen som från ingenstans,/bakom och lät mig på mitt hårda läger/död som en sten bli kvar i solens glans.
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