drafts of three poems

    
    The stars

    Now it's all over. Now I wake.
    It's calm and easy to disappear -
    when nothing remains to hang on for;
    and nothing remains to suffer here.

    Red-gold last night, a dry leaf now,
    tomorrow - nothing in this place.
    But stars burn silent as before,
    at night, in the surrounds of space.

    Now I want to give myself
    so not a single scrap remains.
    Will you, stars, accept a soul
    with no possessions in her train?

    With you is freedom, perfect in
    the peace of far eternities.
    Heaven is not blank to one
    who trades her dream and her unease.

    (tr. from Karin Boye)




    The old dad

    The old dad, I have seen him in the dusk of a summer night,
    in the clover-scented night, working on his own.
    By the spring that belongs to the farm
    he stood, a bent figure,
    sharpening the haymakers' scythes;
    he was barely a shadow - so grey,
    and quite as old as the farm,
    yet he seemed to live on with as sturdy a life as it.
    His fragile song, this I shall not forget:

    Oh you, the lord and master of the farm,
    to the old dad you are only a boy.
    I was the first one who broke your soil.
    When the ploughshare jams in the furrow
    do you think of me then?
    In ancient days
    I began with all the thrown-aside stones
    to raise the stone-pile that marks the edge of the farm.

    For a thousand years
    I have built it now and built beside all who built;
    I have held the ploughshaft with all who ploughed.
    I have a part in your work,
    have a right to claim.
    You know it well:
    that the holy seed may grow
    always, always,
    here in the fields
    where I first sowed it.

    (tr. from K Boye)




    The root composes and the moss composes
    mica gravy, in autumn the horse-boats.
    Horse dumplings, I blacked out in the liquorice channel
    was lowered parasol eyes, the wheat flicker
    current and swollen
    (hip over black splashed rock

    dusty agency who bought it! Yes it was
    cargotailor