Lennart Sjögren: 'Lungan'

 

The lung

 

A lung lies on an islet

or rather on a tussock

in the smallish lake

and all around is forest

that is never-ending.

 

It seems to be still breathing

It says: look, I’m alive!

 

It has been removed from something that was

larger

from anything that existed in the sphere

of either animals or humans.

 

The birds here fly low and obliquely

they glide towards the surface of the water

but finally shy away.

No, no end is there to the forests

and the towns spread out like fish roe

in all that resembles congealed water.

The railway tracks unfurl their meanders

as if life was nothing else

than constant farewells and returns.

 

To be part of this travelling

which is an inward journey

and the lung that still lies there

in the small lake

and is scarcely visibly breathing.

 

As evening draws near it shimmers like opal

little remains of its light shade of pink.

It could be from a human being

that left its body

before dissection took place.

But it is more likely

that it derives from some everyday poaching

now before winter

now before the thin and hazardous ice.

 

*

 

As night falls the signposts disappear

only the lung indicates the way.

 

Older than any legend

although just recently excised

it tells you who you are,

and your embarrassment subsides

when you have listened long enough

And your face (that which you regarded as yours)

becomes increasingly erased in the twilight.

And

when it

says about itself: I was once two

the one half was taken away or eaten up

and actually died after a long loss of blood

I was borne by strong bird’s claws

to this lake

the death took place elsewhere

even so I say: look, I’m alive.

Give me a hand,

one chopped off or a live one

so that I have something to hold onto

when from this place I now

descend towards what lies deeper.

 

*

 

The nights and the value they can have

To say one thing and mean something else.

Which

is the harder and more desirable art

that of telling the truth or of lying

Which is it harder to retain

to die for and to live for.

 

If what the lung now says

that it was borne here by claws

then one’s conception of an act committed

on the spot becomes invalid

and the forest becomes even deeper.

And if it furthermore says

that it is alive

although it is not.

While what is waterlogged

continues to rise through the layers of clay

and while far off

cargo vessels and small yachts run aground

in sudden storms on other coasts

and while

the birds in here continue to fly

obliquely over the fen

because their eyes sense

as yet undiscovered traps

the lung starts to lose

its increasingly opal-tinted membrane.

It descends

emptied of blood.

 

But what one believed

was its illness

was instead a bath on the bed of the lake

and what one believed was a lie

crawled like a white slug

ever closer to the truth.

– But it was some other truth

some other attitude

that was thus revealed.

 

And yet it talked about a life.