Swedish Poetry 1
When morning X-rays night... When morning X-rays
night barely even a skeleton is visible: white fish bones left in white sand. So what cat came here to indulge his taste for rainbow-colored meat? Ah, I mean: what sabre-toothed pet have we, unknown to ourselves, kept crouched inside our head… The cyclops winks in his eye-socket cave. The notepad kept beside the bed is silent. Nonetheless, its stripes alarm dawn’s fossil hunters and those who fish for the mother-of-pearl remains of decomposed men’s clothes. In its hidden pocket the treasure map stays unchanged but the landscape doesn’t. The dark is marbled by no mineral worth mining: mica’s mimicry of gold, and glitter whirling through the rolled up hours in the lion’s lair, where cool matter is bloatedly digested behind rib blinds. Brontosaurus weather outside. Heavy billiard balls are rolling over the dissection table and through a thin slice of tropical fruit streaks of body-warm light make constellations of stone appear, which a strangely uncontroversial tradition gives names such as “The Encyclopedia”, “The Ice Pick”, “The Unicycle”, and “The Great Night”. O Great Night, between whose paws I am a worn ball that bounces. Malte Persson, from Dikter (Poems), 2007 Translated by Hildred Crill and Malte Persson MALTE PERSSON Dikter (Poems, 2007) Malte Persson is one of the very few poets of his generation who likes to write in bound verse; the sonnet in particular has become his trademark. He is just as firmly at home in the tradition as he is in the contemporary world, employing references to both Rilke and the ancient world and to spaceships and pop artists. In the volume Dikter he pays court lovingly, though not uncritically, to literary history, and it is in that dynamic that an explanation is to be found of the peculiar charm created by his poems. With apparent nonchalance and irony he launches attacks against tedium using his rich vocabulary and daring wit. Words are twisted and accorded new meanings, and the bewildered reader can never predict what to expect from this brilliant poet. 55 Collections of Poetry: Apolloprojektet (2004) Dikter (2007) Underjorden (2012) SWEDISH POETRY