I drove home seen through
by the summer day’s brilliance
by rain and stillness
seen through by the moon.
A cuckoo perched and who-whoed in a birch just north of the house. It was so loud that at first I thought an opera singer was performing a cuckoo-imitation. Surprised I even saw the bird. Its tail-feathers moved up and down with every note, like the handle on a pump. The bird hopped, feet together, turned and cried out to all four directions. Then it lifted off and, muttering, flew over the house and far away to the west. . The summer is growing old and everything flows together into a single melancholy sigh. Cuculus canorus is returning to the tropics. Its time in Sweden is through. It wasn’t long! In fact, the cuckoo is a citizen of Zaire. . I am not so fond of making journeys anymore. But the journey visits me. Now when I’m pushed more and more into a corner, when every year the tree rings widen, when I need reading glasses. There’s always more happening than we can bear! It’s nothing to be surprised about. These thoughts bear me as faithfully as Susi and Chuma bore Livingstone’s mummified body straight across Africa.
I
The knight and his lady
were petrified but happy
on a flying coffin lid
outside of time.
II
Jesus held up a coin
with Tiberius in profile
a profile without love
the power in circulation.
III
A dripping sword
obliterates memories.
The ground is rusting
trumpets and sheaths.
Like being a child and an enormous insult
is pulled over your head like a sack;
through the sack’s stitches you catch a glimpse of the sun
and hear the cherry trees humming.
But this doesn’t help, the great affront
covers your head and torso and knees
and though you move sporadically
you can’t take pleasure in the spring.
Yes, shimmering wool hat, pull it down over the face
and stare through the weave.
On the bay, water-rings teem soundlessly.
Green leaves are darkening the land.
Each on its own side of a strait, two cities
one plunged into darkness, under enemy control.
In the other the lamps are burning.
The luminous shore hypnotizes the blacked-out one.
I swim out in a trance
on the glittering dark waters.
A muffled tuba-blast breaks in.
It’s a friend’s voice, take your grave and go.
Outside the window is spring’s long animal,
the diaphanous dragon of sunshine
flowing past like an endless
commuter train — we never managed to see its head.
The seaside villas scuttle sideways
and are as proud as crabs.
The sun causes the statues to blink.
The raging conflagration out in space
is transforming into a caress.
The countdown has begun.
It’s teeming under us. Trains depart.
Hotel Astoria trembles.
A glass of water by the bedside
shines into the tunnels.
He dreamed he was imprisoned on Svalbard.
The planet rumbled as it turned.
Glittering eyes passed over the ice.
The miracles’ beauty existed.
I
The high-tension lines
taut in cold’s brittle kingdom
north of all music.
~
The white sun, training
alone, runs the long distance
to death’s blue mountains.
~
We need to exist
with the finely printed grass
and cellar-laughter.
~
The sun lies low now.
Our shadows are goliaths.
Soon shadow is all.
II
The orchid blossoms.
Oil tankers are gliding past.
And the moon is full.
III
Medieval fortress,
a foreign city, cold sphinx,
empty arenas.
~
Then the leaves whispered:
a wild boar plays the organ.
And the bells all rang.
~
And the night streams in
from east to west, traveling
in time with the moon.
IV
A dragonfly pair
fastened to one another
went flickering past.
~
The presence of God.
In the tunnel of birdsong
a locked door opens.
~
Oak trees and the moon.
Light and mute constellations.
And the frigid sea.
I
One day as she rinsed her wash from the jetty,
the bay’s grave cold rose up through her arms
and into her life.
Her tears froze into spectacles.
The island raised itself by its grass
and the herring-flag waved in the deep.
II
And the swarm of small pox caught up with him,
settled down onto his face.
He lies and stares at the ceiling.
How it had rowed up through the silence.
The now’s eternally flowing stain,
the now’s eternally bleeding end-point.
Walk past, they are buried. .
A cloud glides over the sun’s disk.
Starvation is a tall building
that moves about by night—
in the bedroom an elevator shaft opens,
a dark rod pointing toward the interior.
Flowers in the ditch. Fanfare and silence.
Walk past, they are buried. .