LATE ARRIVAL ON EARTH
(1932)
FERRY
SONG (1941)
NON SERVIAM (1945)
STROUNTES (1955)
GUIDE TO THE
UNDERWORLD (1967)
Euphoria
You sit in the garden alone with the notebook, a sand-
wich, the flask and the pipe.
It’s night but so calm that the candle burns without flutter,
spreading a glow on the table of rough-cut boards
gleaming in bottle and glass.
You take a swallow, a bite, you fill and light up your pipe.
You write a line or two then take a break and consider
the ribbon of dusklight moving towards dawnlight,
the sea of hogweed, foaming green-white in the summer-night
darkness,
No moths by the candle but a [a] chorus of mosquitos in the oak,
the leaves so still against the sky… And the aspen that rustles in the calm:
The whole of nature strong in love and death surrounds you.
As were it the last night before a long, long journey:
One has the ticket in one’s pocket and finally everything packed.
And you can sit and feel the closeness of those faraway lands,
feel how everything is in everything, at once its end and its beginning
fell that here and now is both your departure and arrival,
feel how death and life are strong as wine within!
Yes, to be one with the night, one with myself, with the candle’s flame
that looks me in the eyes, inscrutable and still,
one with the aspen that trembles and whispers,
one with the flowerheads leaning out of the darkness and
listen
to something I almost said but never got stated,
something I didn’t want to betray even if I could.
And I’m brimming inside from pure happiness!
And the flame rises… It’s as if the flowers crowded
closer,
closer and closer to the light in shimmering rainbow points.
The aspen shivers and plays, dusklight moves
And everything that was unsayable and far is unsayable and near
—-
I sing of the only that reconciles,
the only practical, equal for all.
Gunnar Ekelöf - Ferry Song Complete translation into english. Björn Thegeby. Wordpress.com 2018.
