The fourth poem of 'Tag och skriv'

The beauty I have sought until now was the springboard’s rocking.

The wisdom I have believed in until now was the cowardice of the diver.

But the one waiting for reconciliation is one unreconciled.

The one wanting salvation is already damned.

Denial? No, the deepest faith,

that which only can be gained when one believes nothing,

that which can only be owned when one knows:

I am not lying, there is no lying in me

and the truth is far from me (I am far from myself).

I abandon myself

like the last rat abandons a sinking ship,

a burning wreck of which the depths gets their part

                      when the heights have got theirs,

(you have been weighed and found partly light, partly heavy),

one shipwrecked who floats on what is dark and form-shifting,

attracted and irradiated by the star of the mysterious struggle,

the star that unseen is mightier than sun and moon,

which simultaneously is single and double, dark and light,

simultaneously! Not in turns.

Life is a meeting of contrasts,

life is neither of the parties.

Life is neither day nor night

but dawn and dusk.

Life is neither an evil nor a good,

it is the grist between the stones.

Like is neither the dragon’s nor knight’s battle,

it is the maiden.

And no one is to come to me with the dragon’s hunger

                      and evil

And no one is to come to me with the knight’s chivalry,

though the legends lie so beautifully!

And no one is to come to me with the maiden’s trust and hope,

for the battle goes on for ever

and the one who will lose life

is not the dragon

and not the knight

but always the maiden.