Swedish Poetry 1
Talk About You are right to say: “But if I don’t
understand the language, then I’ll be a stranger to the one who speaks and the one who speaks becomes a stranger to me.” But this “is not your speech or your language whose sound cannot be heard. One day speaks thusly to the other.” that is to say that I don’t lie in my vomit on a cell floor or am ceaselessly taken care of due to my liver and helpless do the evil that I don’t want. “One night proclaims it to the other” that is to say that I sleep sober in my own bed. And: “one thing I know: that I, as blind, now can see” and that I, who was once a drunk, am have now been bought back, the etymological root of: redeemed. This talks and talks and talks I about and about and about for you, for you, for you. I sing about what I live through where I live in what I lived in heaven. Majken Johansson, from Omtal (Talk About), 1969 Translated by Johannes Göransson 13 SWEDISH POETRY