Electric Verses

Etusivu : Welcome to Electric Verses! : Eva-Stina Byggmästar

Eva-Stina Byggmästar

Eva-Stina Byggmästar

Eva-Stina Byggmästar´s (b. 1967) first collection of poems, I glasskärvornas rike (In the Kingdom of Glass Splinters) was published in 1986. Since that she has published eight volumes of poetry. The latest, Näckrosön, came out in 2003.


CHILDLIKE LANGUAGE SOMERSAULTS

Dog grows onions in tub,
rags hang from the uppers
of a birch-bark shoe. Shoal of Baltic herring approaches
the horizon – be on the lookout, thin moon, the distance
looks like a magpie’s breast, the one with a sense
for thaws and children
who laugh – like me, like the one who is me.

What is white in a face, from there
comes laughter, one grasps.
Take the hoe, make
holes in the ground, many long ones. I hear
in there it murmurs before one hears other
sounds. Lets some summer come, grass grow everywhere.
Up on the hill, yes, I see you now. The ears,
the eyes, the happy sprout of the tail, like something that is just
beginning to grow. If you are sitting
there, yes you are the one. Filling your breast.
The one who coaxes out warmth
and puts right wrong and reverse. You sit there, yes,
now I see you, you lick me in the face,
the face of my small spirit that must not
become hard,
must not harden.

From Bo under ko, 1997. Translated by David McDuff.

  • Dog grows onions in tub
  • Fortune-hunting is done at toe-s…
  • How hen makes
  • My cow says
  • Yes, green fur
  • Sleeps inside tree
  • Scratch makes gangway