The fifth and final poem of 'Tag och skriv'

The maiden’s fright and flight are the sword and the claws.

From her flight and fright the sword is forged and the claws sharpened.

She dies at every moment, therefore she lives.

She flees at every moment, therefore she stays put.

She assimilates force and counterforce, therefore she vacillates.

She vacillates, therefore she is balanced.

Her crown, cloak and folded hands belong to the battle, not to her,

but the battle belongs to her.

It is on her the battle lives:

she is its decoy.

O profound stillness, shrouded in storm!

You are like a doll discarded by a child,

passively complying with what is meaningless!

For the one who sees through the battle you come forward.

For the one who sees through you you disappear,

for he disappears into you:

A gate that opens, a road that winds away.

On that road a lonely figure that recedes.

The same figure that grows distant and disappears,

time and time again the same

that disappears time and time again:

optical illusion and parthenogenesis.

The fourth poem of 'Tag och skriv'

The beauty I have sought until now was the springboard’s rocking.

The wisdom I have believed in until now was the cowardice of the diver.

But the one waiting for reconciliation is one unreconciled.

The one wanting salvation is already damned.

Denial? No, the deepest faith,

that which only can be gained when one believes nothing,

that which can only be owned when one knows:

I am not lying, there is no lying in me

and the truth is far from me (I am far from myself).

I abandon myself

like the last rat abandons a sinking ship,

a burning wreck of which the depths gets their part

                      when the heights have got theirs,

(you have been weighed and found partly light, partly heavy),

one shipwrecked who floats on what is dark and form-shifting,

attracted and irradiated by the star of the mysterious struggle,

the star that unseen is mightier than sun and moon,

which simultaneously is single and double, dark and light,

simultaneously! Not in turns.

Life is a meeting of contrasts,

life is neither of the parties.

Life is neither day nor night

but dawn and dusk.

Life is neither an evil nor a good,

it is the grist between the stones.

Like is neither the dragon’s nor knight’s battle,

it is the maiden.

And no one is to come to me with the dragon’s hunger

                      and evil

And no one is to come to me with the knight’s chivalry,

though the legends lie so beautifully!

And no one is to come to me with the maiden’s trust and hope,

for the battle goes on for ever

and the one who will lose life

is not the dragon

and not the knight

but always the maiden.

The third poem of 'Tag och skriv'

You say ‘I’ and ‘it has to do with me’

but it has to do with a what:

In reality you are no one.

So I-less, naked and formless is reality!

It was out of fear of it you started to clothe yourself,

started to comport yourself and call yourself ‘I’

to cling to a straw.

In reality you are no one.

A rule of law, human value, freedom of will,

all are images painted with fear in reality’s empty hall,

fear of acknowledging something beyond justice and injustice,

            beyond thesis and antithesis!

In reality you are no one.

Even beyond good and evil a battlefield for good and evil,

the upper wild animal’s fight against the lower –

the truth you suspect at times like an abyss by the roadside,

without daring to know, without wanting to know,

you who feel giddy at the slightest hollow!

In reality you are no one.

A place, a piece of clothing, a name –

everything else is merely your wish,

your I a wish, your unredemption one, your redemption another:

All that you have taken in advance!

Redemption, there is no redemption! You dream up redemption

stammer the Resurrection! And Holy! – for such is your wish.

And human destiny is unchangeably fixed

But you have now taken one more step in building your wishing:

Yet another wish of all the conceivable thousands and thousands

has become possible for you, necessary, certain and finally a fact,

Just as you yourself who also were a wish from the start,

Just as the magical name your parents have given you

To protect you from darkness and I-lessness,

To distinguish just you from a thousand similar and almost the same.

And yet you are basically as nameless as the night and the darkness:

In reality you are no one.

One more by Ekelöf - 'Den dubbla bokföringen'

double-entry bookkeeping

Strange eyes you have given me, god

whose name I do not know

to behold you who do not exist!

For you, human being, it is such

that That Which Does Not Exist you lack

and what you lack must needs exist

And this is not semantic sophistry

but the balance of Nullification!

Oh Nothing, rich in adornments

Oh Nothing, the fount of wisdom

full of sacrificed looks, Nothing’s adornments

Nothing’s burning lights

under Nothing’s vault, borne

by mighty columns, like organ notes in a

registration where the vibrations cancel each other out

Daylight’s stained glass windows

with colours that cancel each other out,

prayers of words that cancel each other out

acts the cause of which nullifes the effect

and tooth for a tooth cancel each other out

Balance! Oh cathedral

that eradicate yourself:

Vision and countervision!

The domain of nullification not arrogance.

To hear this one, go to here