I was what one used to call ‘clairvoyant’
and sometimes got a glimpse of what was to come.
And so I knew about the disc
that one day will be sent out into space
with the entire history of the human race
from the poets Sappho and Einstein
to the tragic misunderstanding.
When it is played on the distant planet
a mistake is made about the speed
so that what had taken a hundred years
has to make do with a minute.
It sounds like the late-summer crickets in the meadow.
We have pitched camp by the small lake, dad and I.
The sky is white, offers not the slightest help with a script.
All that can be heard is nervous mosquitoes,
and crackling and hissing from the fire
where dad is grilling char in greased paper.
This silence among the mountains
takes in our years of silence and distance –
years he likes to believe in brackets.
His hands fumble with a lack of language –
are trying of course to find words that repair
what has never been able to be repaired.
We are dark in the white night
as if we were film negatives.
He smiles a bit vaguely as he hands me the coffee.
But his grey-blue eyes are helpless.
It’s said that I am backward
because I never learnt to read.
But you understood I was simply scared
of all that lurks between the words.
What frightens me about you too
is all the evil contained in a ballpoint pen.
But as for letters, I love them.
I sometimes go off to the library
and stuff my pockets full of them.
The sun itself is made of letters.
Ssssun – then it fizzed.
when it entered my wet chest.
I am glad that you understood.
And I read in my own way, with my hands.
No one here in Östergarn
can repair a bike like I can.
I’m sitting in the garden, apparently alone,
with a glass of Chivas Regal in my hand.
It is that short grey-rose point in the twilight
when the vesper bat replaces the swallows.
I’m going nowhere. Soon time to be dissolved
into nothing. The houses have given up their outlines.
And the maple is reduced to darkness.
No, I am not alone.
A farmer appears right opposite me,
with a rim of snus under his quivering lip,
stretches out from his century towards the glass.
In this summer evening without substance
the past acquires the sharpness of Dürer.
I nudge my glass over to this other person.
From the meadow giggling and horny shrieks can be heard,
thin as a leaf of a bible but distinct.
The night is strong with death and love.
Jöns Lekares kvinnor
Jöns Lekare satt vid elden, som pep bland sura trän,
och sög sin vinrotspipa och sträckte styva knän.
Han talade gamla sagor på ett rent och ohöljt språk
om forna dagar och kvinnor och rus och älskogsbråk.
"Mina kvinnor ha varit många, och bli väl många fler
fast hågen att be och att brinna har slocknat mer och mer.
Och somliga ha väl gråtit - och andra ha skrattat kallt,
och kvinnan hon är väl underlig, för att Gud har så befallt.
Min första var ond och hetsint och öm och grym och snäll,
och med erfaren, trånande kärlighet förförde hon mej en kväll
och grät många bittra tårar och ville ha mej till äkta man -
Men det är somt en kan och somt en på inga villkor kan.
Den andra var emanciperad och ren och kysk och skär,
och predikade renhet i levernet och var fri från köttets begär.
Och jag var ett Adams barn och fann klokast att packa och gå. -
Hennes tal jag gömde i hjärtat och trodde hon menade så.
Men jag undrar ändå om predikandet var bara ett nytt sorts garn,
för hon är gift sedan länge och har många, många barn...
Och det vart många andra, som jag inte mera minns.
Och där lusten brunnit hetast är ett rum där intet finns.
Ty den sista kvinna jag älskat, det sista begär jag känt,
har gjort min själ till ett tomrum, där det innersta är förbränt.
Och till sist är väl allting aska och vitt som vissnat strå -
och kanske det är det bästa - det blir nog lugnast då."
John Player’s women
John Player stoked the fire up, that damp wood caused to wheeze,
and sucked his pipe of vine-root and stretched his stiff old knees.
He spoke of ancient legends in an open, simple way
of long-gone days and women and drink and passion’s fray.
‘I’ve known so many women, there’ll be far more, I fear –
though the wish to invite and ignite grows weaker every year.
And some may well have wept since – and others coldly laughed,
and women seem, as God decreed, to be a race apart.
My first one was fiery and wicked and loving and cruel and kind,
and with practised, languishing arts of love my body she entwined
and wept many bitter tears and me as her husband sought –
but certain things one can while others come to nought.
The second was so emancipated, pure and chaste and fresh,
and she preached a life in purity, free from the lusts of the flesh.
And I was a child of Adam, so decided to pack up and leave. –
Her words I hid in my heart and thought that all of this she did believe.
I wonder though if what she preached sought only to ensnare,
for she is long since married, with kids enough and to spare…
And there were lots of others, though quite who I’m unaware.
And where desire burned fiercest there’s a room with nothing there.
For the final woman I fell for, my final known desire,
has made my soul an empty place, its core consumed by fire.
If all that remains should be ashes, it’s as white as withered straw –
though that could all be for the best – it’s peaceful, that’s for sure.
The boy sits in the apple tree,
cradled against two forking branches,
and immerses himself in the Count of Monte Cristo.
As yet no one knows that Edmond Dantès
will later on become a designer
and bring home treasures ‘made in China’.
Visible though is how he and his child
are raking up grass in the same garden.
And how the same swallows soar up out of nothing,
dart back and forth like swift-spoken lines
and vanish under the selfsame eave.
But the boy still goes on reading his Dumas,
hid from the world by apple blossom.
The May night lightens. The moon hangs in the apple tree.
Up to the low wall withered
wild tulips make a yellow essay.
The damp grass refracts the light
in stabs of red, violet and green,
with dark footprints that have come to a halt –
the blackbird seems to have discovered Mozart.
We stand translucent, struck dumb.
The seasoned stones of the wall
and the old red side-building
are an open hand for the moment.
I
That for a single moment most things are designed
to gain perfection only to die out,
reflects the will of both the world and Einstein.
And that people are like leaves that sprout
under pollution filling every sky
and within the memory they fade alike
is guaranteed by time, which I detect
clutching me by the scruff of the neck.
Therefore at my wits’ end I’m called
upon at one moment to laud
the fact I see you on display,
your young magic as not seen before,
a naked monument that unpunished falls
forward, toppling before my gaze.
II
If in the occident there’s nothing new
just what’s been there from the word go,
what can I then invent that, wrongly too,
some infant has not thought of long ago?
Etruscan, Aztec and Hellenic - as such
you’re pinned as postcards on the wall and hung -
ogling, for sale and worshipped far too much,
my centuries-old shrew forever young.
How would the antique world react
to you body’s present miracle?
Keep on believing that no instant will
ever generate unless the memory’s intact?
The old rogues simple were unable
to handle your self-containment - nor do I still.
III
I thought (a dog’s my frequent guise):
I’ll wait until the wintertime is here,
that can etch lines around her mouth at a trice,
or until cunning spring that envies her
and ploughs deep furrows in her skin’s fine field,
and then she’ll be like I am, marred at best.
Suddenly though this autumn was here, its yield
bewildering and blessed
like my late love and you remain unscathed,
my love. I dare to state my creed
that my coldness will never be your death,
that you will never leave me, dazed
by my deep-freeze breath
I believe so. As do corpses that still bleed.
IV
What you desire, what you refuse, what you may be,
assumes the many shadowy strange curves
of a stranger in my tent and she
has a horrible effect on my nerves,
the inextricable merry widow, she looks
like all her shadows shown on spec.
Do you give me too the selfsame looks?
Aggrieved I learn I look just like your ex.
My metaphors are where I then take flight.
Shadows that rhyme, for me that’s cushy.
Rhetorically, for example: that you taste of spring grass,
or illogically: that you bend like wheat,
or typically: that of late your upper lip was
as lewd as the down of your pussy.
V
Saw a steaming grey that stood there damp
when the sky sucked water from its mane.
Saw a black cloud lick a rainbow clean.
Saw flamingos, flying dogs, starvation camps.
Saw only yesterday how undefiled
though spattered by sunlight the wet lawn gleamed,
it was as if, it could just be, it seemed
to be be the iris of your eyes, now multiplied,
and I forgot all space, all speech, all text,
And at a phantom insect I lashed out
as at your image.
Since you my gaze is quite bewitched,
Even more shattering have I brought about
and mended not one fragment of the damage.
VI
Crowing under the shower only over you.
My common sense for once not acting daft.
Suddenly, in mid-handstand, I just knew
that you are my homogeneous better half
and that we therefore, quite serene,
would do much better living far apart.
It sounds quite common, possibly obscene,
but only then can I give you your part.
Absence would only start to gnaw me through
if I were not to think of you as of a one
that brings together all my abaci.
Therefore I honour distance and the night alone,
for only so can I make of your one a two,
living with two desires unsatisfied.
VII
That I love my own ego far too much, well sure, all right,
and that it is a sin to taint your soul this way
and that it is an illness which, day and night,
lays waste the ego till it wants to die?
Okay, so what? A mirror as my measure
may I then dance till all my notes are known?
I’ve realised too late and with no pleasure
that I’m long-sighted and I own
that’s why I’ve never managed properly
to master my defeat at every turn.
Besides, that’s what I decide for you,
specially when blindly riding you.
Only what you would seek to read in me
will I still learn.
VIII
Just now my stomach clenched with spite
and I don’t know, by God, why I feel so.
Don’t lie, mate. It was only something trite
and it’s envy that controls your glands, too.
‘Why, for example, is William rich and why
does Francis have those sea-green eyes of his
and why is John Disaster always right
and why must I put all with all of this?
Love, tell me that I need not get het up
and make of wretchedness such heavy weather,
that I must sing, feel free as a lark,
each morning of our blazing time together
when, between the sheets, we’re both set up
after the cries, yawns, sobbings in the dark.
IX
Once more alone in my nest, badly worn,
She lies reviving with that other man, it seems.
I travel in my head, in all the corn
and chaff of my dreams.
My dreams drag themselves forward on their knees.
They mill-sail towards her
like hordes of blind men on their skis,
they make so many blunders, such disorder
that there her shadow starts to gleam.
Like amber. Like the grey dawn
she makes the black unblack
and I cannot calm down, I claw
towards the bright spot of her heart, back
towards that light that simply will not dim.
X
Freedom’s your game? Forget it, lady,
you’ve got no talent for it, no antenna,
you have no wish for freedom’s real gehenna,
nor for its pain, nor for the remedy.
Don’t lose yourself in the monotone
of sleep indifferent to sleeping,
in fiddling at that erogenous zone
that keeps on flowing and gaping.
Pretend instead in fetters you’re restrained
and after screwing whisper about being free,
blame me as the one who is enslaving
and let me be deluded, let me be,
tumbling in your moon-struck raving
in one contentment tightly chained.
XIV
And when the little copper kettle full
of the ashes I once was is emptied out
over the patient grass, my beautiful,
don’t stand and fool about
and wipe the mascara from your cheeks.
Think of the fingers which once wrote these lines
when our longing was at its peak
and which stroked you when they were still alive.
And laugh at what I was - recalling then
the cinema and that snoring spate,
the pants that always used to sag,
the feeble joke and lumbering gait
towards you time and time again
when I’d your now warm lushness in the bag.
XV
Years ago I was able to dream
(oh infantile, prophetic soul)
of things as yet unseen,
fatal as the invention of the wheel.
Now the world is mortal just like me,
and that’s the end of it.
I get a kick from all uncertainty,
I don’t believe a shit.
Dreams I chase up to the attic
where the stupid children live.
I’m lying. There’s still one folly as lunatic
for which in this pious sonnet
I provide a narrative -
one last demon with my name on it.
ABOUT YOU
The child chokes a crow
Fingers have their groping ways
The dew makes the rubble glow
The dune is all ablaze
The hours chase each other
The days shorten with each season
The weeks catch up with each other
The months wilt and wither
The year is smaller than a butterfly
Smaller than the spider that brings
Evening hope and morning rue
Everywhere all of this because of you.
