from Ensamtal (“Lonespeech”)
Translated from the Swedish by Johannes Göransson
The voice burns I can see the word it goes through the eye from hearing it is poisonous with clear velocity speak you too
Forest black all clang forest black black forehead foreclang I want to hear
We scoop the sounds scoop and moan it cannot be taken away with words but it goes away with the words
Can we find the words today we say today it burns today the river runs can we guess one by one it burns today
The mountain the forest someone did it someone fell kept away someone appeared to enjoy someone enjoyed the ears are exposed to many sounds I am alone
How curious everything without almost everyone everything everything unshafted without
Ann Jäderlund (b. 1955) is a poet, translator, and playwright. Widely acknowledged as one of the leading Swedish poets of the past forty years, her enigmatic second book, Which Once Had Been Meadow (1988), set off a fierce debate in the Swedish media about the role of mystery, accessibility, and gender in contemporary poetry. Her collected poems were published by Bonniers in 2022. She has also published several volumes of translations, most notably Gång på gång är skogarna rosa (2012), a critically acclaimed selection of Emily Dickinson’s poems.
Johannes Göransson (b. 1973) is the author of eight books of poetry, including Summer (2022) and the collaborative (with Sara Tuss Efrik) The New Quarantine (2023), a decreative translation of Göransson’s first book of poetry. He has translated several poets, including Aase Berg, Ann Jäderlund, Helena Boberg and Eva Kristina Olsson. Göransson was born in Lund, Sweden but has for many years lived in the US. He’s the co-founder of Action Books and teaches at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN.
World Poetry Review 