Sunday 19 February 2012

Angst - Swedish style: Pär Lagerkvist (1916)


Angst, angst is my legacy

Angst, angst is my legacy,
my throat’s deep gash,
my heart’s scream in the world.
Now foaming cloud grows stiff
in night’s coarse hand,
the forests now and
rigid heights ascend
so barrenly towards the skies’
diminished vault.
How hard it all is,
how solid, black and silent!

I grope around me in this murky space,
I feel the rock’s sharp edge against my fingers,
I tear my upward-stretching hands
to shreds against the frozen tatters of the clouds.

Ah, I wear my nails down to the quick,
my hands I tear till they are sore, are wounded
against mountain and darkened forest,
against the black iron of the sky
and against the cold earth!

Angst, angst is my legacy,
my throat’s deep gash,
my heart’s scream in the world.

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