I'll read the first poem in the Swenson's book of translations.
I should say something in the background.
It's so in Sweden that we do a military service when
we are 20 years old for one year,
and then we have to go back again at certain intervals.
And make one month now, and then and that's
happened to me two years ago.
And I was ordered out to stand there with my rifle somewhere.
And just as a sort of jog to warm up myself a little,
I started to write a few stanzas.
It was not seriously meant at all.
It was just a joke.
But these lines, they changed character,
so it suddenly became an extremely serious poem.
And it ended deadly serious.
Yeah, Guard Duty.
I wandered out into a pile of stones like a noble corpse
from the Iron Age.
The others stay in the tent and sleep, fanned out
like spokes in the wheel.
In the tent presides the stove, a big snake
that had swallowed the gob of flame and hisses.
But it's quiet out here in the spring night among cold stones
waiting for dawn.
Heating the cold, I begin to fly like a shaman.
I fly to her body, the parts left white by the bathing suit.
We were in full sunlight, the moss was warm.
I brushed any of those warm moments,
but can't stay there for long.
I'm whistled back from the distance,
I crawl out among the stones here and now.
Listen, to be where I am, also in my silly and solemn role,
I am the place where creation works on itself.
It owns.
The Spurs tree trunks have color now.
Frost bitten forest flowers send a search party for anyone
who's lost in the dark.
But to be where I am, and wait--
I'm anxious, stubborn, confused.
Future events, they already exist.
I know it, they are out there.
Murmuring crowd outside the barricade.
They can only pass one by one.
They want to enter, why?
They come one by one.
I am the turnstile.