Swedish Poetry 1
From 13 Year six and Aniara still on course for L
yra, still with undiminished speed. Holding up a handsome bowl of glass, the chief astronomer set out for us – the emigrants – his current views on space: ‘We’re starting slowly to suspect these depths we’re hurtling through are of another kind than we thought each time the concept “space” on Earth inspired imaginative flights. We’re starting to suspect our loss of way is much more drastic than we first assumed. Our knowledge is perhaps naivety which based on narrow-minded evidence concluded that the Riddle has design. We’re close to thinking now that all this space and glass-like clarity around our hull is spirit’s ocean where we’ve lost our course. Our spaceship Aniara hurtles on through something where the working of a brain fulfils no need: there are no brain cells here. /…/ The same way in interminable space abyss within abyss where light-years plunge around the bubble Aniara is. /…/ yet seen against the depths of space her speed exactly matches that with which we know the bubble makes its journey through its glass.’ Harry Martinson, from Aniara, 1956 Translated by Robin Fulton 29 SWEDISH POETRY