Lars Gustafsson: 'Kromatiska fantasier'

 

Chromatic fantasies

 

And then finally, 

yet again a kind of morning.

Light forces its way in

through many narrow chinks.

 

more and more clocks

join in and form a chorus.

 

From the bazaar of old tower clocks

As if cut out of sooted paper

 

To the light whirring, like swallows

of the very small clocks

 

                                  *

 

More clocks the more the day proceeds. 

 

Here everything now happens very quickly;

The birds stiffen in the trees.

The old wood-turning chisels that slept

beneath blankets of cobwebs

wake up, sharper now

and long to cut

 into blackened oak  

 

The sort of wood that has waited

a very long time under water

deep asleep in its loneliness

and only friends with the channel’s movement

that constantly imitates itself. 

 

You great trees, you once green friends,

why do you stand so naked now? 

 

                                 *

As if cut out of sooted paper

 

And even this day

moves with fluttering sail

into an absent-minded twilight:

the month of November’s 

harsh answer to our address: 

In the trees the birds stiffen now

and become their own shadows