Translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton
I waken the car
whose windshield is coated with pollen.
I put on my sunglasses.
The birdsong darkens.
Meanwhile another man buys a paper
at the railway station
close to a large goods wagon,
which is all red with rust
and stands flickering in the sun.
No blank space anywhere here.
Straight through the spring warmth a cold corridor
where someone comes running
and tells how up at the head office
they slandered him.
Through a back door in the landscape
comes the magpie
black and white, Hell's bird.
And the blackbird darting to and fro
till everything becomes a charcoal drawing,
except the whit clothes on the washing-line:
a palestrina chorus.
No blank space anywhere here.
Fantastic to feel how my poem grows
while I myself shrink.
It grows, it takes my place.
It pushes me aside.
It throws me out of the nest.
The poem is ready.
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