Swedish Poetry 1
From The Starlings Late one afternoon in October
I hear them for the first time: loud-voiced palavering, whistles, murmurs, quarrels, bickering and warbling, croaking and chatter in the high plane trees of the street. The leaves are all turning yellow this time of year, causing huge yellow sunlit rooms to appear at the level of the fifth and sixth floors opposite the barracks, where the tram turns off from the Via delle Milizie. Solid branches, twigs, and perches: every bit of space is taken up in this parliament of starlings! /…/ Soon the darkness of night will fall. But the starlings up there won’t stop talking, they move together, push one another, chatter and flit. From Himlen och andra upptäckter (Heaven and Other Discoveries), 2005 Translated by John Matthias and Lars-Håkan Svensson JESPER SVENBRO Himlen och andra upptäckter (Heaven and Other Discoveries, 2005) Jesper Svenbro, the philologist and member of the Swedish Academy, has discovered a new way of writing autobiographical collections of poetry during the twenty-first century. In Himlen och andra upptäckter it is the women in his family who are portrayed, empathetically and tenderly, in parallel with the presentation of views on cultural history. Implicit meaning plays a decisive role in Svenbro’s technique, as do anachronisms and the unexpected discovery that leads to rare insights, particularly with regard to the way reconciliation can only be achieved SWEDISH POETRY 64 after the event, when it is too late. In his most recent books he has begun a poetic genealogy that has renewed and revitalised contemporary Swedish poetry. Selected Collections of Poetry: Element till en kosmologi och andra dikter (1979) Hermes kofösaren (1991) Pastorn min far (2001) Himlen och andra upptäckter (2005) Hill, Hill, Hill (2014) Ekeby trafikförening (2015) Jesper Svenbro Photo: Ferdinando Scianna