Saturday, 8 May 2021

Kjell Espmark: 'Jag skrev att jag låg naken på bryggan'


 

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.

 

1 comment:

John Irons said...

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.