Translated the first 11 of the 40 poems that make up this weird little modernist Swedish masterpiece, mannen utan väg (the man without a way), during a bout of pre-election fevered insomnia the other night. It doesn't appear to exist in English translation as far as I can tell. Erik Lindegren wrote it 1939-1940 and it was published two years later, notably inspired by T.s. Eliot's "The Waste Land", but also various surrealistic tendencies. The form, borrowed from Lawrence Durrell, is called "exploded sonnets". At first it was widely refused and passed around Bonnier (the major Swedish publishing house) as an embarrassing joke.
I also notice that we attended high school in the same small town. This must be some kind of sign. Have only fleetingly edited so there's probably corrections to be made.
I also notice that we attended high school in the same small town. This must be some kind of sign. Have only fleetingly edited so there's probably corrections to be made.
the man without a way (I-XI)
shadowless winds the road of failure
on earth the strange depth
seen by the sun's ascetic eye
and the congenital blindness of horizons
I.
(in the hall of mirrors where not only Narcissus
sits upon the throne of despair without vertigo
eternity nursed with a grimace
the land of infinite opportunity
in the hall of mirrors where a single contaminated sob
escaped the crossed swords of indifference
and turned the air into promise and soil
that ran along all the city's windows
in the hall of mirrors where perfection is hammered in tin
and carried like a prisoner in the default-chest
where the word commits hara-kiri in the glow of explosions
and the trumpet tastes shattered porcelain and dying blood
in the hall of mirrors where one becomes the too many
but still wants to fall like dew in time's grave)
II.
(the eyebrow twitched its earth-colored shoulders
and breathed frost crystals in the hall of mirrors:
mirrors and running water like eternity-smoke
like faith stacked upon faith in misery's moving-load
for like a jack only grazes its calling
so fairies drill their heel through the soil of longing
and mirrors become running water and offers death
its silent truth without condensation on the glass
but anyone who has lost their way on the water
rejoice no more the loss of life
for he knows that the dream can only throw off its masks
to become inexplicable as a child
and that the veil is that we don't otherwise know
and that all we know is the veil in the hall of mirrors)
III.
who pleads any more to the wanderer with the wheel in his hand
to voices that rock on waters where no one was shipwrecked
who scrubs well the waters to morning and night
and takes dusk's gentle path to his cell
who meets his own gaze on a trip around the universe
and bends his own back into a beggar's bowl
for rain that doesn't want to come and patience
that has come like nightly sheets in born-again trees
who throws not his only truth aside
to find a larger and greener confinement
who thinks he without blindness can break a mirror
who thinks he at the same time can both live and die
in the dark organs and rattles glittered
out of the one-eyed well questions and songs winded
IV.
mirrors turn their backs and the light is dusting
the horseshoe of happiness snakes away in poppy sleep
the truth ages and lays its patience
while the landscape collapses its ruins
the blessing cries out for its lost voice
feeling blindly behind the closed eyelids of centuries
the burning out's staircase savoring to the very end
the mild climate of complete oblivion
the abandoned memory sinks through the floor
and spins a gaping hole in the sleeping one's ear
the annihilation snottily sawing a body in equal parts
bitter like a broken branch in November
but with a death-clock behind the polished forehead
i'm seized by rage's naked thistle
V.
the hand trembles with vertigo on the ladder of stranglers
greedy tears rustling in the empty cage of nightingales
already the weeping itself demands more casualties
even a train accident stammers sorry
a peeled eye burns: short circuits and loneliness
and destiny photographs another surprised corpse
the fire bothering even the uninsured heart
and suffering's guards flees into faith's background
anonymous thorns dream themselves real
and sway to prickle on reality's hillside
but a cry full of pain rolls up a mountain
and throws itself down a cliff to crush
grandiose rests pain's escape on the canvass of eagles
while the wind shuffles the deck of polite faces
VI.
the worm struggles to escape his confidant
and the puppet to find rest
the disease leaves its place under the microscope
tired of watching shrunken pupils
the suffering rootless strikes up its whitewashed eye
only to be crushed under the children's fleeing feet
but the jester speaks with thunder and the one for death
prepared braids a barbed-wire-wreath in his hair
and sees the heart sink heavy like a stone
to a bloody and strangely warm despair:
to rest under earth with singing trees in his mouth
to talk in his sleep with all the faithfully deceived
no it's not yet time to look into god's eye
but this stone not even will's crowbar can disrupt
VII.
here in this silence that erases the border
between the living dead and the dead's living wish
where two halves are joined in a double blindness
to better hear how light falls
slowly, deceptive as if it knew what it wanted
when night comes and day is empty
and the purpose leans out of its tower
with the seal of horror to be better preserved
in the darkness of throats where the bodyguard's lances
blocks all exists for a drowning bliss
here in this silence which erases the border
where light falls and anxiety grays
regeneration's storm accesses our dry future earth
while blindness sneers through its glassless window
VIII.
the tired tree can't free itself from the blood
and hesitation can't raise its branches
the false simplicity can't speak the truth
and self-flagellates in vain into a witness of blood
gemstones tempting with oblivion's dried out riverbed
but the way to life goes through a different desert
there alone with the sun I remember the world
and comrade Orestes who can't speak for sand
there alone with the woman I forget the sun
and its tired tree in the smoldering cave
its burnt eyes that wake in the evening
when the desert freezes to death in spring's grieving-coat
when the invisible drama takes its place in the wings
and in the silent desert flows a sea of man
IX.
but first must a hunger-tower mercifully fall
and far and wide illustrate the fugitive's weakness
his carved eyes with caves of a smoke-blue cold
that teaches anxiety's falling drops
his fear of happiness the white endless hand
his hardness to life his softness to death
with innocence's forever spinning horizons
his longing that braids with tongues of fire
the eternal forest that absently draws in the water
while the cloud surreptitiously lets its marble-head fall
weathered to a grimace of surprising pain --
o the moment of recognition how space plunges
suffocating blackness o whirling springs and only
his helmet so still so radiantly blind
X.
hatred's black magnet has sucked in our escape
and the suffering closes its chalk and begs no more
in the market we trade our worn-out faces
forced to let the disease have its way
our false strength's spectacle silently performed
the spotlight ironically facing down into our abyss
but the heart distills an unreal light
that rocks our fear to a lasting quiet
and swings open all doors we've been forced to lock
in the terrible choice that mutilated our selves
it is as if this earth and heaven is ours
as if our limbs radiates with wealth
as if the world disappeared without a trace like in a dream
and rests at last safely in us
XI.
and only deeper do I sink into earth's spring
that germinates in my mouth in my hands my throat
while the twilight in the valley hurries its steps
and the shadows fling away the glow of impatience
as if they heard the earth's muffled cry in my mouth
and wanted to ignite the branches' trailing wings
to escape the too secret torments:
the bloody spur's demand for nowhere --
but by the springs' glowing roots where the giant's eye
slipped from my embrace up to the stars' stretcher
I found a monastery of strength with mellow streams
a hand of silence kneading the clay
and I rested safe under the burden of stones
the protection of burdens in twilight's bleeding spring
