For the Swedish poets, from A Star by My Head, poems translated by Malena Mörling and Jonas Ellerström.
from Poetics / by Gunnar Ekelöf
What I have written
is written between the lines
20th-Century Swedish Poetry
DPF / Ekelöf
For the moon and the sun, from The Star By My Head.
from Sung / by Gunnar Ekelöf, translated by Malena Mörling and Jonas Ellerström
The night tonight is a starry clear one.
The air is clean and cold.
The moon is searching in all things
for its lost inheritance.
DPF / Öijer
For a belated day and what we would say to our younger selves if we could, from The Star By My Head.
from Hold Him There / by Bruno K. Öijer, translated by Malena Mörling and Jonas Ellerström
without thinking
I had phoned my childhood
listened to the dial tone that went through
and when my mom answered
I asked to speak to myself
after a long while
a seven year old boy took the receiver
and his voice pierced my heart
DPF / Tranströmer
For music, from The Half-Finished Heaven, translated by Robert Bly.
from Allegro / by Tomas Tranströmer
The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.
The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole.
DPF / Aspenström
For undecipherable lilacs, from The Star by My Head.
from You Have to Practice Reality / by Werner Aspenström, translated by Malena Mörling and Jonas Ellerström
When your sister comes to visit
you often talk of lilacs
as if lilacs were an extinct species
and did not bloom new each June
in halls of mild honey and the songs of thrushes.
Daily Poetry Fragments {Semi-Daily} 