WEBVTT

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I'll read the first poem in the
Swenson's book of translations.

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I should say something
in the background.

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It's so in Sweden that we
do a military service when

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we are 20 years
old for one year,

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and then we have to go back
again at certain intervals.

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And make one month now,
and then and that's

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happened to me two years ago.

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And I was ordered out to stand
there with my rifle somewhere.

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And just as a sort of jog
to warm up myself a little,

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I started to write
a few stanzas.

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It was not seriously
meant at all.

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It was just a joke.

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But these lines, they
changed character,

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so it suddenly became an
extremely serious poem.

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And it ended deadly serious.

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Yeah, Guard Duty.

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I wandered out into a pile
of stones like a noble corpse

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from the Iron Age.

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The others stay in the
tent and sleep, fanned out

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like spokes in the wheel.

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In the tent presides
the stove, a big snake

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that had swallowed the
gob of flame and hisses.

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But it's quiet out here in the
spring night among cold stones

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waiting for dawn.

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Heating the cold, I begin
to fly like a shaman.

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I fly to her body, the parts
left white by the bathing suit.

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We were in full sunlight,
the moss was warm.

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I brushed any of
those warm moments,

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but can't stay there for long.

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I'm whistled back
from the distance,

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I crawl out among the
stones here and now.

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Listen, to be where I am, also
in my silly and solemn role,

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I am the place where
creation works on itself.

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It owns.

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The Spurs tree trunks
have color now.

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Frost bitten forest flowers
send a search party for anyone

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who's lost in the dark.

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But to be where I am, and wait--

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I'm anxious, stubborn, confused.

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Future events,
they already exist.

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I know it, they are out there.

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Murmuring crowd
outside the barricade.

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They can only pass one by one.

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They want to enter, why?

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They come one by one.

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I am the turnstile.

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