explains leaflessly
that in our despair we have made
a flowerless earth
sexless as chlorine
see a morningpale star
gleams above like a brain
that is almost used up and burned out
too diffuse to recall
a man’s and a woman’s
union in their wingless flight
in a sweet-scented meadow
a summerwarm bed
see the clear waterfall
has congealed and grown small
on its way up the rock face again
and the fathomless roses
have hidden in bogs
indelible pollen laid by
for eternity
here they are copied fair in a script that is like
the script that the clouds in their drifting can write
or the script Archaeopteryx wrote into stone
across a dizzying sky-blue and clean
eternity
eternity
see the still becalmed wheat
in the haze and the heat
on its way down the rootstock again
while the poisonous winds
that paralyse blindly
move slowly and sullenly on
to eternity
never will death itself be the same any more
earthly death that all mortals must die as before
they are now counted down they are ticking away
while the earth crackles just as if it had frozen
for eternity
eternity
see the wonderful summer
the plums blue as doves
blown to particles feathering down
see the bindweed greywhite
as it crumbles and sinks
to the depths of the unmoulded clay
for eternity
there they are signed into the planless game
where none can tell whether a thing will remain
whether what’s raven or starling or lark
lost for all time will find itself there
in eternity
eternity
while the leaves of an elm tree
are swept down a street
and summer is greying with soot
I walk down the avenue
dark as when snow
one evening has frozen to blood
for eternity
here I slip in behind an old graveyard’s walls
where only the petrified doves go for walks
here they steal about in search of a place
where the stone heart informs them that peace settles down
for eternity
eternity
alphabets exist
the rain of alphabets
incessant rain
grace light
intervals and forms
of stones of stars
courses of rivers and
motions of mind
tracks of animals
their routes and ways
nest-building
human solace
daylight in air
sign of the hawk
union in colour
of sunlight and eye
wild chamomile
at houses’ doorsteps
snowbanks wind
house corners sparrows
I write like wind
that writes with clouds’
tranquil script
or quickly across the sky
in vanishing strokes
as if with swallows
I write like wind
that writes in water
with stylised monotony
or roll with the heavy
alphabet of waves
their threads of foam
write in air
as plants write
stalks and leaves
or loopingly as with flowers
in plumed circles
filaments dots
I write like the water’s edge
writes a tideline
of seaweed and shells
or delicately as mother of pearl
feet of starfish
secretions of mussels
I write like the early
spring that writes
the common alphabet
of anemones beeches
violets wood-sorrel
I write like childlike
summer like thunder
over domed treetops
lightning and wheat
I write like autumn
marked for death
like restless hopes
lightstorms slicing
fog memory
I write like winter
write like snow
and ice and cold
darkness death
write
I write like the beating
heart writes
the skeleton the nails
the teeth the hair
the skull their silence
I write like the beating
heart writes
the hands the feet
the skin the lips
the sex their whisper
I write like the beating
heart writes
the muscles the lungs
the face the brain
the nerves their sound
I write like the beating
heart writes
the blood the cells
the visions the tears
the tongue their cry
14
nights exist, nightshade exists
the dark side, the cloak of namelessness exists
the northern limits of consciousness exist, there
where what is dreamed opens and closes its
northerly crown in nastic turnings
without day and night being definitely
placed, without nadir, zenith
straight below or above and without
the naos, the innermost space of the cell
revealing whether the seed in an inner sky
gathers the limits of consciousness into a point
a flowering point where like a bit of sunshine
ice ages exist, ice ages exist
where like a bit of fire the insects’ wingless
Nike exists, neither victory nor
defeat, just the solace of nothing;
the solace of names, that nothing has
a name, namelessness has a name
that names exist, names like narwhal
nettle, names like carnation, tawny owl
and nightjar, names like nightingale, new moon
evening primrose, naiads, and the other kind of
name in which a word when named is scent
like the narwhal’s name for Arctic seas,
the nettles’ names for fever, like carnations’
names for light reflected into factory-white
nights, like the tawny owl’s, the nightjar’s names
for feathers, the nightingale’s names for being
an Old World warbler hidden in moist thickets
like the new moon’s names for Earth and Sun
the evening primrose family’s names for kinship
like the naiads’ names for being pondweed
whispering the naiads’ names in wind
so here I stand by the Barents Sea
out there is the Barents Sea
and it looks like the Barents Sea
is always alone with the Barents Sea
but around behind the Barents Sea
the water stops at Spitzbergen
and just behind Spitzbergen
ice drifts in the Arctic Ocean
and just behind the Arctic Ocean
there’s solid ice at the North Pole
and just behind the North Pole
it looks like the Beaufort Sea
is all alone with the Beaufort Sea
but around in back of the Beaufort Sea
it looks like Alaska
has always seen only Alaska
but behind Alaska
at last is the Pacific Ocean
it looks like the Pacific Ocean
is always alone with the Pacific Ocean
but around behind the Pacific Ocean
ice drifts in the Antarctic Ocean
and just behind the Antarctic Ocean
there’s solid ice at the South Pole
and just behind the South Pole
there’s water again in the South Atlantic
and just behind the South Atlantic
the water stops at Africa
and just behind Africa
some water again in the Mediterranean
and just behind the Mediterranean
it looks like Turkey
is all alone with Turkey
but around in back of Turkey
there’s water again in the Black Sea
and just behind the Black Sea
it looks like Romania
is always alone with Romania
but right behind Romania
there’s the Soviet Union
it looks like the Soviet Union
is all alone with the Soviet Union
but right behind the Soviet Union
there’s Finland
looking like Finland
is all alone just Finland
but around behind Finland
there’s Finnmark
and just behind Finnmark
planed and chrome plated
beneath a dome of light
so here I stand by the Barents Sea
all alone by the Barents Sea
evening June 24th
the Gävle canal is as shiny as metal
and regardless of weather it always reflects
a cloud cover somewhere, so you never
feel up to carving your heart in
the water and, blindly as a poem that
is written too soon, flowing away
from the county extras in the square
the streets lie as someone must have
laid them out once, waiting, the light from
pavements rises toward an overgrown sky
and not until five o’clock when the factory gate
opens do you see a child run over to
her father while he looks like a stranger
and share his uneasiness before it disappears
it is here in a worn-down province
where from hour to hour the street-trees
cast shadows longer than before
collect water and watch that the adults
keep track of their allotted time
and preferably feel no regret
it is here in a worn-down province
where no citrus trees bloom
where the swallows do not even come and
summer is almost somber with sun
that people lie awake and think
while the gardens slowly take root
only a few dogs are still about
an eagle lands on a coverlet of
air, while a child in her bed gets
the printed wallpaper to look like
a sky that will clear up soon
it is here in a worn-down province
with a wistfulness no one dares love
that the gravel on the paths of the manor grounds
keeps creaking for years
after the last lovers have gone away
it is here in a worn-down province
that the last flock of houses has long
since stopped so people can watch TV
and save up tears for future use
only a nestless sparrow flutters up into the air
only a breath as if from everything’s
lawless sorrow makes a tree
whisper a black indefinite sound
before the train starts up with a jerk
and I soon will remember only the
empty platform and the bench with the
wet newspaper, which the wind,
leafing so pensively through everything, never
could lift, while the rest is washed into
my childhood somewhere in a
dry indestructible house where
I stand by a window and look
at the train through the sheets of rain
evening June sixteenth
there’s something specific
about the doves’ way
of living my life
as a natural result
of today since it’s raining
and as always in rain
they softly alight
on the window ledge
so close to the white
piece of paper that they
can easily see if
I’m writing of doves or of rain
it can feel wrong
that it never is doves
themselves impassively
writing of doves
of the rain perhaps
or the pane that they just
with a round little eye
see me so blurrily through
they don’t realise
that especially their flight
and their wings are connected
with gentleness, peace
a relationship making it
practically impossible
to mention doves as doves
for instance in a poem
or to mention doves in rain
as the drenched and dishevelled
doves in rain that they are
today since it’s raining
it was actually first
at Berlevågs harbour
where the gulls rage
in the cold in June
that the absence of doves
of their arbitrary
clucking and crooning
struck me with something
that was not wonder
but quite ordinary
everyday openness
almost a reverence
as if the world held
a magnificent crystalline sphere
of minuscule steps
on wine-red feet
an ever-enamoured
complex tracking-down
of food and desire
in the caverns of day
a murmuring wanting
from second to second
to circumvent death
and communicate presence
it struck me that poems
about doves about rain
must start in an egg
in a dizzying drop
must start out with down
with a gathering of drops
with feather on feather
a searched-out design
with greyish and brownish
and whitish and bluish
immaculate colours
with strata of water in air
with a heart somewhere
with delicate lungs
like bracken of oxygen
with the clouds’ web
with absence and at
the same time with a thirst
for human happiness
with all the possible
words made impossible
meaningless so that
the rain can rain down
and the doves can alight
so softly upon
the white paper that I
can easily see if they’re
writing of me or of you
of the rain perhaps
or the peace that they just
with a round little eye
see us so blurrily through
morning June 26th
dreamers go around openly now
with dreams out on their skin
with the lustre of membranes
and entrails spread over
their bo
dies like old-fashioned
maps; the specific
contours of the moment show
the future’s embryo
as a contagious stand of fossils
and the earth’s surface cracks like
peeling canvas; the stuff
of dreams and everything else a human
being was made of flutters
in the air, a few classic
strips of veil and gauze
around the glassclear thoughts
while drops of sorrow break out
on a forehead washed clean;
as when ships with windblown
dead leave the sinking
water and put in through the town
in the creeping sun they always
gather on a summer-grey evening
with violence and decency
bound to fragile flesh like
particles of soot bound to soap;
anyone at all is a hostage
somewhere in the jungle of consciousness
and builds on a church of snow
anyone at all raves on about
the gods’ punishment about chaos
that reaches its boiling point far
too soon and anyone at all
curries favour unseen
with the patrols of an unyielding
order where they hand over life as collateral;
only the poor live on in fear
of dying before the rich give
orders at last for
anything at all;
and as clocks run races over
the planet and hearts are filled with
stone after stone that never will
fall as machines devise
other machines as if it were
possible to conceal that the future
conceals nothing today as
nothing happens as I sit
somewhere in my apartment almost
apathetic alone at any rate with
thirty pounds of white paper today
as August eleventh slowly
but surely vanishes as
the full moon closes its eyes
against the dazzling sun today
a woman returns to
the village sees if there is
water in the charred
well grubs a bit in the ground
with a stick hut picks up
nothing and sits down and
waits thinks she can hear
a dog in the distance from
the forest that’s still smoking
and that keeps on smoking
when the night chill comes
thinks she can hear the stars’
flames when the stars come out
right where the house with
the fence and garden used to be
thinks she’ll rest
a bit and dies
a bird flies off a bit of dust
eddies up a drop of water falls
on a leaf on a branch on a tree
on an earth and the rain starts
to cry noted somewhere in the
distance as rain on the computer
screen a bit of infrared radiation