Thursday 6 May 2021

Kjell Espmark: 'Lågtrycket med centret i Baltikum fördjupas'


 

A deepening depression centred on the Baltic area

 

Here the road wanders out towards Sysne headland.

The horizon portions out a sea

constantly new lines that time after time

turn over the same worn-out truths.

The sky is coarsely grey

and so low one kneels down. A stroke of memory

might have lingered over the rocks

and the brushwood for a moment glittered like viper’s bugloss.

No memory exists.

Behind the window of the boatswain’s cottage

a Nietzsche bent with old age is glimpsed

swearing at the smoking wick of the lamp:

it’s delaying his final work,

‘The death of Tragedy’. The rickety ladder

the old women from the village used

when they scrubbed the sky clean in spring

lies on the doorstep, chopped up as firewood.

The tree in the front yard is crushed together

like the teaching aid’s T-Ford

when it approaches the speed of light.

No heart is large or simple.

Even the grass lies low.

 

Only between the newly written waves

can one with a little effort read

how history insists even so.


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