Swedish Poetry 1
Visitor I existed I was about to exist and came t
o a stop like a visitor among us zigzag lines of lightning pouring along my arms I carried a bird by my hair that flew off each time someone came too close to me and the world was a tower dizzying steps of days and nights that bled into one another I walked alone I did not touch that life others had opened and helped themselves to when my hands were a child’s hands they fumbled along the side of my head and my head sanned the night where a star continually fell out of my mouth rain emerged like a brittle and deserted ringing from a little clock made of brass Bruno K. Öijer, from Det Förlorade Ordet, 1995 Translated by Malena Mörling och Jonas Ellerström BRUNO K. ÖIJER Det Förlorade Ordet (The Lost Word, 1995) Bruno K. Öijer returned to poetry in the 1980s, after an interval of ten years, with a trilogy whose common thread is a restrained fury at the ransacking of nature and our loss of contact with the experience of previous generations. An earlier expressionist idiom has been softened in these works and the tone is more muted. A theme of decline can be traced in the critique of civilisation at work in Det Förlorade Ordet, but resignation is confronted with the optimism nature offers humanity. The vulnerability of the defencless is a prominent theme in the work of SWEDISH POETRY Öijer, who returns to the world of the child in several poems, offering consolation and solace for all the grief the child has met and will meet. New forms of connection are uncovered and an alternative way of living is identified in poems based on individual experience that nevertheless lead to universal insights and a sense of community that may have been repudiated but is still there for us to discover. The world is an enchanted place in these artfully simple poems and worthy of the respect the poet accords it. Selected Collections of Poetry: Fotografier av undergångens leende (1974) c/o Night (1976) Spelarens Sten (1979) Giljotin (1981) Medan Giftet Verkar (1990) Det Förlorade Ordet (1995) Dimman Av Allt (2001) Och Natten Viskade Annabel Lee (2014) 48