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

Lennart Sjögren: 2 Poems

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