Thursday 10 September 2009

The hare-man

By Lennart Sjögren

More and more often I think of the hares
fleeing across the fields

and when I think of the hares
I also think of the human beings
fleeing across the fields

When pain overtakes them
they cry shrilly and are similar in that,
but humans hunt humans
and in that are unlike the hare.

I who am hare-man and man-hare
I bear witness only to what I myself have seen
But I also have
a kind of clouded faith:

I believe in the hare’s bulging eyes
I believe in the hare’s hind-legs
which are also those of man.

translated from Swedish by David McDuff

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