Kjell Espmark
He's Sitting On a Bench in the Past
I took you for another
when you came in the burning stairway.
Your shadow looked like an axeman’s.
I am familiar with the axe, you see.
Had it day after day in my throat
a prolonged beheading. Month after month.
The executioner aimed badly, thought
I could be parted from the song all the same.
I refused.
He gave me a place here while I lived.
The axe was lifted sky-high.
His neck sinews tautened like string.
His sweaty chest was trembling.
I saw Stockholm closing round me
where I lay on the rough paving stones
The harried crowds of Iron Square
made way for cholera-churls and soldiers,
journeymen, shopmaids, carpenters.
A city which carried its lost within itself
stood bowed over me and gave me its strength.
The axe fell.
I refused.
Never was the song more my own.
One night in March he gave up.
Now I can move freely.
As you hear from the others
my dialect is already current here.
Are the vaults too low for song, you mean?
hat’s what makes song possible.
You’ll hear the fierce music
if you renounce your listening.
Page(s) 87
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