Peel my heart clean
of doubt
and peel it clean of faith
you won’t find any core
in a body like this
peel my heart clean
until only a dried-up muscle
is left.
*
We find it hard to form
a notion of the dead
but at any rate they seem to be
considerably more alive than us.
On certain idle afternoons
when no one says anything
and no one dares to think
they come towards us
and they say to us
clearly and methodically
what we don’t dare to say
until we’ve woken up
and the breeze has stirred in the grass again
translated from Swedish by David McDuff
1 comment:
I've never really read any Lennart Sjögren, though when I taught English at DN in the 1980s, his son Erik was my contact person there.
The first poem here is rather negative. Ironic? The second poem is oxymoronic. I'd have to read a lot more Sjögren to know whether I like his work.
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