LATE ARRIVAL ON EARTH
(1932)
FERRY SONG (1941)
NON SERVIAM (1945)
STROUNTES (1955)
GUIDE TO THE
UNDERWORLD (1967)
Each human is a world
Each human is a world, peopled
by blind beings in shady rebellion
against the I the king that rules them.
In every soul are a thousand souls imprisoned
in every world a thousand worlds are hidden
and these blind, these lower worlds
are real and alive, if unfinished,
as true as I am real. And we kings
and princes of the thousand possible within us
are ourselves subjects, ourselves imprisoned
in some greater creation, whose I and being
we grasp as little as our superior
his superior. From their death and love
our own feelings have taken a shade.
As when a mighty steamship passes
far out there, under the horizon, where it lies
so evening calm. – And we do not know of it
until a bow wave reaches us on the shore,
first one, then another and many more
that strikes and foams until everything turns
as before. – Everything is yet different.
Thus, we shadows are gripped by a strange unrest
When something tells us people have moved,
That some of the possible have been set free.
Gunnar Ekelöf - Ferry Song Complete translation into english. Björn Thegeby. Wordpress.com 2018.
