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Jesper Svenbro

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Sunlight on The Sound

Because my father had grown up in Helsingborg,
I had the strongest feeling every time we visited
of his belonging there:
his kinship with the city so impressed me
that I made it mine.
From my grandmother’s apartment
we had an excellent view of the Sound:
Kronborg Castle was straight across
in the sun, its roofs green with verdigris.
Ships of different kinds steered to the south or north.
174 / Svenbro
Ferries and sailing boats shone white . . .
This is what I am thinking of this morning
having woken from a dream
that seemed to take place on the beach
just north of Helsingborg.
My dream is like a poem of light.
And every time I go over it in memory
it remains unchanged:
not a boat can be seen at sea,
not a single person on the land.
The sea and sky are blue. A southwesterly breeze.
I am standing on the sandy beach in the sun
and seeing the horizon open in the northwest on immensity beyond.
I turn my gaze to the west
and I am saying aloud in my dream
where for an instant words and visual impressions
correspond in every way: The sunlight on the Sound.
In my dream it is as though these words
composed a truthful
and exhaustive statement about the world –
as if I wouldn’t be able to add the smallest adjective
without obscuring the sun.
I couldn’t add a single word.
Nor could I subtract one.

 

from Three-Toed Gull: Selected Poems by Jesper Svenbro. Translated by John Matthias and Lars-Hakan Svensson. Evanston: Hydra Books/Northwestern University Press, 2003.

http://nupress.northwestern.edu

Translated by John Matthias, Lars-Hakan Svensson

Page(s) 173-174

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