from Stillness

a warm vapor in the garden

embracing our bushes

our ripening blackcurrants

and our buried sorrows

and confessions

and our longing, hand in hand

with loss in these millions of droplets

these millions of nerves that glimmer

in the dark, bones, luminous

little worms, synapses

drawers half open

red

gaping

with rows of black teeth

we won’t escape, you know that

how buildings swallow us

their waves fill the air

vibrating, conversations covered

overlapping conditions

discontinued safety labels and

regulations in several languages

I see and I think and through all this you rise

a voice

lost and found again out there among the paths

that come and go among cabins and nothing

your hair, your voice, your city

buildings with rebars, stems,

electric grids and desks in room upon room and in each

one you lie and in the dim light that

filters through the blinds and the dead

and half-open drawers that gape,

small hands tightly clenched, small warm frightened hands,

under the covers in room after room and relatives

ready with red wool blankets

but we have the voices already inside us

and we have the dead’s furtive glances at the doors

and if you’ve come this far you can no longer

deny me, you are one of us,

and we are they and all these visions

grow among paths and places

where the chime where the musk orchid teeters as the deer

passes and then stands, still in the clearing

the old mill bridge lies cracked in the grass,

the old stone wall

the riverbed that closes behind dark doors

steps and the rush of steps that rests in moldering planks

in gravel in white moss on the stones

all these voices that watch as we pass

and we can’t stop ourselves from hearing

we can’t stop ourselves from being the ones who set traces

and tongues in motion through places and times because in us

grows what is revealed and it wants words

it wants to embrace us, because we are its

breath and the thousands and millions of droplets that

sway in the morning cold some

october days to frost and split worlds

with ropes swaying, rocking into the forest

a sleep of pasture and rainboots

a sleep of wide-brimmed hats of hammers that strike down

iron pipes and let their chime sound over the marsh

Stanzas 92-103 from Stillhetens sträckta halsar. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2002.

Image by Antonio Carrau.