Lars Gustafsson: 'Solipsism'

 

Solipsismen

 

”Det flyende ögonblicket”

Det enda verkliga ?

Denna idé som uppträder

Hos filosoferna ,

under anspråksfulla namn,

som presentism och annat,

har en litet ruskig konsekvens

som gärna glöms bort:

I detta nu, vårt enda hem,

har de andra ingen plats.

Den lämnar oss ensammare

Än vi kom dit.

Hur då ?

Men naturligtvis:

Även i den intimaste kontakt,

säg även kyssen, åtgår tid.

 

Om ögonblicket är det enda

verkliga som finns,

Då har vi ingen plats

Där vi kan mötas

 

Skuggor är ni ,de andra,

skuggor från det förgångna

och de skuggor framtiden rymmer

 

 

Solipsism

 

“The fleeting moment”

The only thing that is real?

This idea which appears

In the philosophers,

under high-sounding names, 

such as presentism et cetera,

has a somewhat scary consequence

that people like to forget:

In this now, our only home,

the others have no place.

It leaves us more lonely

than when we arrived here.

How so?

Well, naturally:

Even the most intimate contact,

even a kiss, say, takes time.

 

If the moment is the only 

real thing that exists,

We have no place

where we can meet

 

You are shadows, the others,

shadows from what is past

and the shadows the future contains

Lars Gustafsson: 'På kvällen'

 

Om kvällen

 

Man bör om kvällen, säger Mr B.,

analysera den förgångna dagen

som hade den varit en dröm.

 

Liten insekt på rutan,

Förväxlad med fritt flygande fågel

långt därute i landskapet 

 

skapar ett intryck 

av någon som färdas

i svindlande hastighet

 

 

 

In the evening

 

In the evening, says Mr B., one ought

to analyse the day that has passed

as if it had been a dream.

 

Small insect on the window pane,

Mistaken for a free-flying bird

far out in the landscape 

 

creates an impression 

of someone travelling

at dizzying speed 

Lars Gustafsson: 'Om de lägsta ljuden'

 

Om de lägsta ljuden

 

Det finns en stämma i stora orglar,

trettiotvåfots bas, kontrafagott

 

väldig darrande luftpelare, senhöst,

när vattnet i brunnarna stiger

 

det underjordiska nätet av vattendrag och brunnar.

Och det är mera sorg än ljud.

 

Vid denna nedre gräns där musiken tar slut

vill nagot annat börja,

 

mera kropp än ljud, kropp och mörker,

och senhöst där brunnarna stiger,

 

men eftersom det är under jorden,

under musiken, under klagan

 

– vill det inte börja, börjar inte,

och finns alltsa inte till.

 

Nu är det närmare, nu är det tydligt!

Nu hörs det strax i hela trakten.

 

 

 

Regarding the deepest sounds

 

There is a stop on large organs,

a thirty-two-foot bass, contra-fagotto

 

a mighty quivering column of sound, late autumn

when the water in the wells rises

 

the underground network of watercourses and wells.

And it is more sorrow than sound.

 

At this lower boundary where music ends

something else wants to start,

 

more body than sound, body and darkness,

and late autumn when the wells rise,

 

but since it is below the ground,

below the music, below the lament

 

– it is unwilling to start, does not start

and thus does not exist.

 

Now it is closer, now it is distinct!

Now it’s immediately heard in the entire area.

 

Dan Andersson: 'Jag har drömt'

I have dreamt

 

I have dreamt that I would sing the way  I’m feeling,

how I hate and how I love, how I curse and how I pray,

how in madness from my friends I’m always fleeing,

and in darkness to the unknown one pray.

 

I have dreamt one day a song I would be singing

of all the souls’ worst terrors, of all that lights the sky,

of when I see the whole world dancing, swinging

and shaking in a frenzied hue and cry.

 

I have dreamt that when all stars above are shining

over wilderness that whispers what in loneliness has passed,

that winds which round the woodland lakes are whining

would teach me how in song to hold things fast.

 

I have dreamt that a tiny, tiny woman

with lullabies would rock me, with laughter soothe my plight,

and when all I’d built must burn she’d come and

join me in that fire’s baptismal night.

 

I have thought that all the swift years of my lifetime,

which have killed what I have loved, have stolen what I’ve owned,

would perhaps teach me a song, one of the springtime

that has dwelt in me and blinded me and gone.

 

I’ve believed that all the storms so long rampaging

through my soul would blend to form a senseless  song.

That where I’ve stumbled over hell, with terror raging,

I would come to learn its grim songs before long.

 

But look, my sundial soon noon will be showing

and never have I sung what my heart’s prayed for yet!

Will I first sing when shades of death start growing,

when endless darkness I have seen ahead?

 

Must I live till I have forging skills for linking

all roses and all fears into a living chain

which will tremble like a drunkard and start slinking

like a bowed note down in death’s dark domain?

  

Lars Gustafsson: 'Kromatiska fantasier'

 

Chromatic fantasies

 

And then finally, 

yet again a kind of morning.

Light forces its way in

through many narrow chinks.

 

more and more clocks

join in and form a chorus.

 

From the bazaar of old tower clocks

As if cut out of sooted paper

 

To the light whirring, like swallows

of the very small clocks

 

                                  *

 

More clocks the more the day proceeds. 

 

Here everything now happens very quickly;

The birds stiffen in the trees.

The old wood-turning chisels that slept

beneath blankets of cobwebs

wake up, sharper now

and long to cut

 into blackened oak  

 

The sort of wood that has waited

a very long time under water

deep asleep in its loneliness

and only friends with the channel’s movement

that constantly imitates itself. 

 

You great trees, you once green friends,

why do you stand so naked now? 

 

                                 *

As if cut out of sooted paper

 

And even this day

moves with fluttering sail

into an absent-minded twilight:

the month of November’s 

harsh answer to our address: 

In the trees the birds stiffen now

and become their own shadows

Jan Baeke: 'Tempus Omnia Revelat'

 

TEMPUS OMNIA REVELAT

 

How a man looks need not draw attention.

He stands out of the light or dissolves in the crowd the street

can equally well draw attention.

 

That’s not the issue here. We are ready

for eternity, that is the soul

he captures on a fine canvas, well-framed

although his reputation seems like shifty cattle.

 

He works from the true, says

that there stirs in the gaze the fine details, that which

you cannot see, almost the light the hand of God. 

 

That much we know. Faults in the weave, small shifts of colour.

Never a church or board that had a problem

with a natural defect.

So do we work to that same law.

 

A gentle smile, firm features

must shore up our successors, be a light

above the heavy table where they easily fall ill

and exchange figures for gout and Holland gin.

 

Knowledge of worth is our salvation.

Our duty to remain a warning and a lesson.

Tell that to the painter!

 

 

 

Lars Gustafsson: 'Om förhållandet till musiken'

 

Om förhållandet till musiken

 

Jag tänker mig ett fullständigt slutet klot.

 

Detta slutna klot innehåller någoting.

 

Ett starkt magnetfält ordnar järnfilspån i mönster.

 

Genom kompakta väggar.

 

Det är så jag använder musik,

 

och varken musiken eller jag vet,

vad vi egentligen handskas med.

 

 

On the relationship to music

 

I imagine a completely enclosed sphere.

 

This enclosed sphere contains something.

 

A strong magnetic field orders iron filings in patterns.

 

Through compact walls.

 

This is how I make use of music,

 

and neither the music nor I know

what we really are dealing with.

 

 

Gerrit Komrij: 'Moeder'

 

MOTHER

 

My mother at times came alive

Was granted the gift of the gab –

She gabbled on fixed overdrive –

A seamless past made up of blab –

 

But most of the time she said nowt.

Reminding me most of a pillar

Unreachable, steely throughout.

To kiss her would not be a thriller.

 

Quite senile. She cackled away.

‘Good gracious, how well you’ve been fed’

‘What times we once had, not today’

‘And when will you leave?’ – and then dead.

 

 

 

Multatuli (1820-1887): 'Grafschriften op Thorbecke'

 

GRAFSCHRIFTEN OP THORBECKE

 

II

Wandlaar die me hier begraven ziet,

Als ’t sterven ’n kunst was, dan lag ik hier niet.

 

XX

De man die hier begraven leit,

Stak uit in onuitstekendheid.

 

 

EPITAPHS FOR THORBECKE

 

II

You who see my grave while passing by,

Were dying an art, not here would I lie.

 

XX

The man who’s now departed hence

Excelled in lack of excellence.

Gerrit Komrij (1944-2012): 'Bugaboo'

 

BUGABOO

 

Strip me of poetry and

I’m a mailman nothing more

A counter that’s lost the score

A man with no magic wand

 

Divest me of my masks and

I’m a starch-necked minister

A hair-splitting word-twister

With marble grave close at hand

 

A bungler who’s trundling along

The sunset his ultimate stop

All love of mankind’s judged as wrong

And bunglers are all for the chop