The Poet Göran Sonnevi

(Written Sunday 2011-04-10, 16.18-16.37)

*
maybe Impossible
this Mission is
should I pretend a while to be

that poet that i studied in my teens
the shy and tender man
named Göran Sonnevi?

in memory the snow is falling down
just like it did this hour that he wrote
his neighbor that embalmed the bodies of the dead
the snow was falling on those Swedish plains
when Sonnevi, still young, was thinking of
those bodies, dead, in foreign Vietnam

this shy and silent walker, still
will puzzle me with urgent melodies
like was he always walking in his sleep

still reaching further
than i ever will

now years have gone
since last i read that Sonnevi
and language can not justify
that mood

I got from reading of his poetry
an even bigger task I give myself
to write like him, but not with Swedish words

to imitate him, with an English tongue
is daring, like his long life task
to conquer limitations, oh so strong

his speech so stumbling, yes like almost blocked
could not prevent his words in written verse
and so his victory was there to see

and if I never read a line again
of poet Sonnevi, this wizard mild
I´ll keep the spirit of his written word
along that road until my dying day
*