A bird of boat
Bird of boat —
carry me away.
Tomorrow, we will plant a million daffodils
in the dark.
They will burst out gold
and raise fanfares to the trees
till they clap their overjoyed leaves.
Pigeons light up
and the sea in the treetops gets its lighthouses
to guide all that has gone astray back home to port.
Loyal whooping swans of light
swoop through the month of March,
leaving their gleam on new-sown fields.
Bird of boat —
carry me away.
——————————————–
Sewing swallows
The swallows sew this evening, fastening
the roof to the barnyard walls
with their flight in and out, and in and out again.
The lake grows calm where the diver-bird
chants mass for the dead
and the answerless.
You can reckon as much as you like
but it will never come to an end. Rooves attached
to walls by needleworking swallows.
I have laid aside my book and now stare
straight out at it all, realizing
that in my eyes, too, the swallows sew.
Lying on its back on the table,
the book feels the evening damp weigh down its pages
while thought sews rooves to walls
with its eyes. Spruce trees lean into one another
in night’s embrace and listen
to the diver’s lonely song
from the mirror-smoothness which also sees —
at a distance — the swallows at work
patching and matching roof to wall.
Stefan Albrektsson Poesi 