Poems I wish I had written, part fifteen

He is more than a hero
he is a god in my eyes—
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you — he

who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing

laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast. If I meet
you suddenly, I can't

speak — my tongue is broken;
a thin flame runs under
my skin; seeing nothing,

hearing only my own ears
drumming, I drip with sweat;
trembling shakes my body

and I turn paler than
dry grass. At such times
death isn't far from me.

- Sappho

Poems I wish I had written, part fourteen

Waiting
John Burroughs

Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it hath sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.

The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.

The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.

Poems I wish I had written, part thirteen (For Ana)

maggie and milly and molly and may
ee cummings
10

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

Poems I wish I had written, part twelve

Things
by Lisel Mueller

What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.

Poems I wish I had written, part eleven

Från en stygg flicka
Karin Boye

Jag hoppas du inte alls har det bra.
Jag hoppas du ligger vaken som jag
och känner dig lustigt glad och rörd
och yr och ängslig och mycket störd.

Och rätt som det är, så får du brått
att lägga dig rätt för att sova gott.
Jag hoppas det dröjer en liten stund...
Jag hoppas du inte får en blund!

(From a bad girl

I hope you're having a rotten time.
I hope you're lying awake like I am,
and feeling strangely glad and stirred
and dizzy and anxious and very disturbed.

and suddenly you'll hurry up
to settle down and sleep like a top.
I hope it takes you longer than you think...
I hope you don't even get a wink!

Translated by David McDuff)

Poems I wish I had written, part ten

On My Head's Playground
by Joumana Haddad

(Translated by: Issa J. Boullata)

For a long time
I was their spear and its goal
Until the scream of sex
Filled my loneliness.

For a long time
They did not know
When I shone with my early femininity
On the bed of my childhood,
When I learned
To steal my own treasures in order to become rich.
For a long time
They did not know
When my body mellowed with its honey sheen
And found its narrow path.

For a long time
I invented arts and practiced instincts good for me
When I played with them on my head’s playground.
I played the coquette,
I flirted and dallied,
I refrained,
And I yielded.
For a long, long time
They sat in my imagination
And I devoured them
And they did not know.

From Crave by Sarah Kane

And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the the programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your

and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you're gorgeous and hug you when you're anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I'm next to you and whimper when I'm not and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don't and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I'm rejecting you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I'd ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don't believe me and have a feeling so deep I can't find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I'd get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don't want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don't mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it's empty without you and want want you want and think I'm losing myself but know I'm safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don't deserve any less and answer your questions when I'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really dont' want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it's all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it's a beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you.

Poems I wish I had written, part nine

Blueberries

It’s their plumpness that gets me,
As though they wanted to be something else entirely –
A cherry, an aubergine embryo, a heart
Swollen with love or pride or pleasure –
As though they were bursting our of their skins
With desire and ambition
With ideas above their station

And the faint grey sheen of their darkness
A silvery fox fur that bruises easily
Or is licked off like sugar,
Like sweat off a lover.

They colour icecream and cordials,
They stud those muffins you love
With bursts of sweetness and stain
the buttery crumbling cake
An imperial purple

Your favorite fruit, you say.
They remind you of home.
Of summer in Canada
Of being young and greedy.

Or, older but no less greedy,
Of fields high in the Apennines
Where families were scooping the bushes
With steel combs nailed to wood boxes,
Singing and happy and sweating.
We smelt them before we saw them.

Blueberries have no smell,
But their taste is fragrant and summery.
They taste like flowers would taste
In an edible universe:
A jolt of colour,
Cool skin on the toungue,
Explosions of pleasure.

A. Alvarez

Poems I wish I had written, part eight

Poems I wish I had written, part seven

Burnt Norton

T.S. Eliot

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Poems I wish I had written, part six

Mad Girl’s Love Song
Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Poems I wish I had written, part five

Kväll - morgon
Tomas Tranströmer

Månens mast har murknat och seglet skrynklas.
Måsen svävar druncken bort äver vattnet.
Bryggans tunga fyrkant är kolnad. Snåren
dignar i mörkret

Ut på trappan. Gryningen slår och slår i
havets gråsetensgrindar och solen sprakar
nära världen. Halvkvävda sommargudar
famlar i sjörök.

(Evening - morning

Moon - its mast is rotten, its sail is shriveled.
Seagull, drunk and soaring away on currents
Jetty - charrel rectangular mass. The thickets
founder in darkness.

Out on doorstep. Morning is beating, beats on
oceans' granite gateways and sun is sparkling
near the world. Half smothered, the gods of summer
fumble in seamist

Translated by Robin Fulton)

In all honesty, that translation does not capture the original at all.

Poems I wish I had written, part four

Storm
Tomas Tranströmer

Plötsligt möter vandraren här den gamla
jätteeken, lik en förstenad älg med
milsvid krona framför septemberhavets
svartgröna fästning

Nordlig storm. Det är den tid när rönnbärsklasar
mogna. Vaken i mörkret hör man
stjärnbilderna stampa i sina spiltor
högt över trädet

(Storm
Here the walker suddenly meets the giant
oaktree, like a petrified elk whose crown is
furlongs wide before the September ocean's
murky green fortress

Northern storm. The season when rowanberry
clusters swell. Awake in the dakrness, listen:
constellations stamping inside their stalls, high
over the treetops

Translated by Robin Fulton)

In all honesty, that translation does not capture the original at all.

Poems I wish I had written, part three

i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

Poems I wish I had written, part two

ATT LEVA
Karl Vennberg

Att leva är att välja
och hur hänförande stort är inte valet
mellan betongmuren
och de sönderfläkta naglarna

O ungdom som kastar dig ur sängen
för att få hjulet i rörelse
och vända på världen
medan dagarna kryper som ormar
kring min tomhet
och vänskapen stramar som rep
kring mitt guppande adamsäpple

Endast gubbklådan
håller mina händer i verksamhet
över slutrökta cigarretter
och sönderbombade stationer

Varför skulle jag inte minnas
eller ge upp hoppet
längta efter betongmuren eller hjulet
tomhetens ormar
eller vänskapens rep

Att leva är att välja
O saliga val
mellan det likgiltiga
och det omöjliga

(TO LIVE

To live is to choose
and the entry is not much choice
between the concrete wall
and the broken fan nails

O youth who throw you out of bed
to get the wheel in motion
and turn the world
while the days creep like snakes
around my emptiness
and friendship are tightening the rope
around my Adam's apple bobbing

Only the old man's itch
keep my hands in the business
over the final smoked cigarettes
and bombed stations

Why would I not remember
or give up hope
long for the concrete wall, or wheel
emptiness snakes
or friendship rope

To live is to choose
O blessed choice
between the indifferent
and the impossible)

Poems I wish I had written, part one

INGENTING
Edith Södergran

Var lugn, mitt barn, det finnes ingenting,
och allt är som du ser: skogen, röken och skenornas flykt.
Någonstädes långt borta i fjärran land
finnes en blåare himmel och en mur med rosor
eller en palm och en ljummare vind -
och det är allt.
Det finnes icke något mera än snön på granarnas gren.
Det finnes ingenting att kyssa med varma läppar,
och alla läppar bli med tiden svala.
Men du säger, mitt barn, att ditt hjärta är mäktigt,
och att leva förgäves är mindre än att dö.
Vad ville du döden? Känner du vämjelsen hans kläder sprida
och ingenting är äckligare än död för egen hand.
Vi böra älska livets långa timmar av sjukdom
och trånga år av längtan
såsom de korta ögonblick då öknen blommar.

(NOTHING

Be calm, my child, there is nothing,
And everything is how you see: the forest, the smoke the race of the rails.
Somewhere far away in a foreign land
The sky is bluer and a wall with roses
Or a palm tree or a tepid breeze –
And that is all
There is no more snow on the branches of the spruce
There is nothing to kiss with lips so warm
And all lips will in time grow cold
But you say, my child, your heart is powerful,
And to live for nothing is less than dying.
What wanted you with death? Too feel the disgust spread by his robe
And nothing is worse than death by ones own hand.
We shall love the long hours of life filled of disease
And cramped years of longing
So as the short moments when the desert’s in bloom)

November is Dad's month

November isn't only the month Dad was born in, it also holds Father's day (yes, I know it varies between countries, but in Sweden it's the second Sunday in November) and now also the day of his death, on the 30th.

I've had almost a full year without him now, and I don't know why it reminds me so much of that poem by Dylan Thomas. My dad was hardly a child when he died, nor did he die in a fire, he wasn't a girl and he didn't die in London...

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

Perhaps it's simply the last line, after the first death, there is no other, and knowing that dad never seemed to get past the death of his own father, or maybe it's that he never became himself after the passing of my brother. Yeah, after that first death we sieze to be innocent children, so in that way every death is a the death of a child.

In the time that has passed between now and his passing it's been a suprisingly large amount of people that seem to have seen my greif as theirs, that my loss is their personal loss. Do they know what was taken away?

He was born in 1946 in Söder, the Katarina neighbourhood. Those blocks aren't now what they were then. He used to speak of his childhood's streets the same way that Bruno K. Öijer speaks of his. That happiness was held up by the houses with history and the narrow streets and the filth. Once that disapeared life was never the same.

He had a guniea pig that chewed on an electrical cord and died. He used to talk about it every time we went to Ölands djurpark and saw the guniea pigs there. That's how I know. He started working as a running boy when he was about 11 and ate hotdog buns with mustard that cost him a couple of öre at the time. He used to do pranks, and even in his 60s he giggled about them. He's the only man I've known that giggled. I always liked it, he could fake laughs, but never giggles.

After his dad died his mother got remarried, that's where my last name comes from, that marrige. Apart from a new last name he also got two blond younger brothers. He did his värnplikt in the air force and after that was left out of his mother's house. I guess he was concidered an adult by then.

I don't know much about his 20s, other than that he worked in stores, and he hated doing returns on clothes in one of them, and just stuck the returned garments in a storage room until a boss found it and he had to deal with it then. He also got married in 1966 and had a daughter in 1967. The marrige didn't last long.

He had a couple of businesses, one lunch resturant, a sallad bar, a candy store, and a gift shop, and later on he had a women's clothing store. He used to travel to find garments he wanted to sell. He enjoyed a steak in Mexico, and something that turned out to be a monkey's brain in India, he got lost in New York and forgot to tip a waitress.

In the 70s he met my mother, married her in a civil cermony on December 27th 1973 and they first lived in an apartment that smelled like bleach and later on bought a cottage without electricity or running water. With his own hands he made it up, he even dug a sewer line to connect to the community one. Around the time the house was done I was born.

Later in the 80s we moved to another suburb of Stockholm, to a house that was half brick and half white. It had two balconies and a drive way bound to scrape your knees. Dad bought a yellow and red bus named Elin. We used it for holidays, we drove everywhere in it. Around the same time my brother was born. Dad continued his travels only occationally being home. He brought back exotic things and t-shirts with glitter.

In 1987 his first daughter gave birth to his first grandchild, a girl. She had dad's first greatgrandchild in 2007. He also has two grandsons, carried by the same first daughter.

It's easier for me to piece together what he was up to after I was born, and he was always singing, telling stories or playing the guitar. When he put my hair in pigtails they were always uneven and I was always late to daycare when it was his turn to take me. He was always the first one with gadgets. He had a cellphone in his car, the briefcase kind, so I always got to ride in the front seat in his car so that I didn't kick and break it. He started piddling around with computers then too.

About Elin, it must have been a piece of heaven that came down to earth. She had a max speed of 80 kilometers per hour and slowed down when the hills went upwards. We parked it every where and slept comfortably in her beds. Later on she also worked as a guesthouse kind of deal, parked in the driveway.

In 1989 we moved again, this time to the south. Dad and mom bought a house in the middle of nowhere, and without either one of them having jobs we found ourselves among trees, cows, sheep, chickens and pastures. It wasn't too long until dad did find a job though, with a long commute, of course, but still a job. When that company was for sale he bought it and moved it to another town. It was still doing well when he died and I felt bad when I filled in the papers to close it down.

In 1992 my brother died. Suddenly and unexpectedly. I don't know how dad really felt, I don't know what he really thought, all I know is that it became a constant thorn. Dad built a guesthouse next to our house and named it Tussebo. Elin retired then.

In 1994 dad and mom adopted my second brother.

I don't think I should tell more of his story as the rest of it is so much of mine, also I much prefer to remember how he was rather than what he became when he started getting sick.

His favorite flower was cowslip, his favorite colour was purple, his favorite food was kalops, he liked Monty Python, Benny Hill, Sällskapsresan, crime novels and Discovery channel. He always wore sheepskin slippers in the house and liked staying up late. His favorite season was summer, he hated being cold. He dreamed of opening a hotel in Greece or Spain and living in warmth when he retired, he never got a chance to.

I'm utterly grateful for having had him for a father. He's the one that taught me about the bigger perspective. He also taught me that if you fail it means that you simply found a way that doesn't work.

It's still so bizarre that he's gone, all those "never agains", and knowing that I have to figure out the rest in this life without him. In the year that's passed I've managed to forgive so many things and I've learned to see him in a different light, ironically that only makes me miss him more.

He always called me Humlan, and that's one of the "never agains". Noone will call me that again and I'll never again be suprised by his humanity.