WORKS Poems by Liv Lundberg, 1999
translated by Susan Schwartz Senstan and the poet
PART ONE: SCULPTURE
(sculpture)
a sculpture in a room
simple elements of material and time
will assemble a picture
which looks like you
this is the picture of you
nose tip, ear lobe, jaw bone
in the throat are stuck the words
no mouth has uttered
clothes stitched around a body, a purse
with identity papers
whoever you may be
with your pale, unclear face
a birth certificate
a signature
shadow and sun, the daily
almost machinelike repetitions
they say they know who you are
they say you are
a picture of yourself
you look like a sculpture in a room
(contour)
a body, barely sketched
in all simplicity
newborn, unfinished as a primitive sign
a naked contour to fill with the work of cells
limbs loosely jointed
head dancing on the spinal column
like a bird on a jet of water
in the play of drops: fragments
of feathers, cartilage, bone
and minerals
in my mind
I want to watch your creation
if it is you
if it is me
(marble)
a sleeping child
in words from the future
cheek resting against
a pure topographical dream
in form’s meditative childhood
to awaken later
in a marble surface
face lifted by the flight of its eyes
skull burdened by the shadow of its meaning
(henry moore)
passing through the arms of henry moore
like a child through its mother
in the entanglement of sensibility
in a space orchestrated
by its surfaces
a truly naked being
through passages of a body without end
absolutely real, unreal
as you are
born
a person filled with blood
carved out of stone, a statue
(vision)
a vision visits you
finds you home in bed one fresh hour
warm and dreamy, unripe
it tells you it is complete
more or less
a consummate creation
needing just a hand and a hammer
a little of your labor, a few hours’ work
to rise up and remain standing
longer than a life
out in the gardens of reality
its stony feet in the fragrant grasses
(group)
to stay out there
upright alone and neutral
or as a group of three
draped female figures
a bond immortalized
in stone
like a social law
a kind of love
or just to sit, the two of you
on a bench
out on a ridge with cliffs and grasses
your stony eyes turned southwest
like a king and a queen
surveying
their non-existent realm
dreaming of peopling that wasteland
with peculiar children
a whole family of figures from the borderland
(light machine)
a light moving machine
on its own drive
with the force of the wind
a delicate exploration of light
its building up and breaking down
the disappearing
light of night, light’s morning gift
to the wedding party
the grating light from the locked ward
the sculptural planes of the light
on a face, your face
reached for and embraced
by shadows
the forsaken light, monotony’s
grey light
which wipes away the contours
of a person
until content and form unite
the eye that sees closes
around its dark pupil
and leaves the light
to extinguish itself
(rodin)
I see
naked newborns with outstretched arms
I see something suffering, extended
stretched out like a woman
under observation
and the thinker thoughtful
bent over
I see an omnipotent arm raised
by the lawmaker, the tablet writer
standing before the unfinished figures
stiffened, silenced
in their becoming
I see
a humble witness
enter through the monastery gate
to write down all these days
noting the contemporary explanations
on the computer
in his cell
with the nightmare’s gift for precision
(the cave)
I study the hole from outside
ponder over its introversion
the form of its concealment
one entrance only; an inconspicuous crevice
I slip in
in cave fascination
unlit cavern corridors
the light from my headlamp
caresses formations
of stalagmites
and stalagtites
my feet tread carefully
on the purely physical side
of the excavating
feeling of the cave
patterned in mental grey tones
clothed in secrecy
(still life)
who threw the angel out of heaven
a shining, blue black splash of matter
amorphous, ugly, alien creature
from the outskirts of space
or from the inner globe exploded
in lava spurts
and solidified into a stony moment
who drew
the ragged coastline of the marriage
between order and chaos
who twisted the cave inside out, smashed the masks
of those who dance, who die
discovered
the physical law of wisdom
its blue black exterior
and recorded its de facto despair
(giacometti)
giacometti at gallery louisiana
I am twenty-one
and just as vanishingly thin
as the elongated creations
which fill the space between heaven and earth
with distance
stretched out across a world which tapers
and extends
with the soles of their feet forged to the base
like giant, wingless birds
stiffened in their stride
standing woman. walking man
existence barely exists
in my vision
equally thin and ambiguous
a shock of insight:
I am, am not
the exposed, extended creations
have taken the space into their bodies
the light into their shadows
taken possesion of my sight
adorning themselves with my eyes
like shining spheres
surrounding me
with their precarious bronze balance
a crass plea
to exist
to act
to ache
PART TWO – SHAPING
(cross)
a cross
a simple cross mark
you stand at the crossroad
where the four winds meet
encircled by the horizon
watching an arrow fly
into infinity
blood drops, nail wounds
a cross
civilization’s simplest sign
you must choose your direction
go just go
just become a human being
a star, a flock of birds
(line)
the playful line came first
along with the gesture
the straight line is military
disciplining the scribble
into a legion of points on the march
a target-seeking arrow in the bow, a lifted spear
a line, infinte
or confined between two points:
a line drawn, a boundry set
by a person who is – and owns
the straight line divides the world
into over and under, into heaven and earth
into this and the other side
the straight line
treats the surface of space
radically and unequivocally : connects or divides
(point)
a point is always alone
the zero the silence
before anything has begun
a point born of the moment
when a fingertip touches matter
a stick or a pen taps a surface
a point is a minimum
can not expand or alter
without becoming other than itself:
a spot, a small circle or a line
the tantrics say the point is light itself
colourless before the start of colour
the point
to which everything is returning
(form)
in the almond form
two circle segments meet
vulva: eye and mouth
(human figure)
a figure of clay
a rather small man
stands with his head tilted
in the fields outside the village
humble almost pleading
with enormous ears and his hair
gathered at the nape of his neck
one arm, draped
around him
collecting himself
a form of being human
simply being
present in his life’s work
PART III — INSTALLATIONS
(meaning)
1.
the rooms chained together
through corridors and stairways
start to relate to each other when double doors are thrown open
so the light from tall opposing arched windows
meets in the airy room
where light crosses light a human being stands
still, almost transparent
and waits
and grows
2.
in the shadows along the garden wall
flows a canal, the dark water mirror
adorned with coloured leaves
scattered by a natural autumn hand
we arrive by crossing the stone bridge’s arc
and see a person pass
under the vault of the arcade
a glimpse of body between column and column
like a measure of the building’s rhythm
and life content, a study
in mankind’s construction of meaning
(tension)
the narrow trunks of young trees
can yield to the tension
strain their arching to the utmost
to participate in the building
that which cannot bend, will break
rigidity is full of fear
to be so staunch, so inflexible
in its upright axis—
pride:
I am who I am who I am
immutable
until the impact hits
and the break can not be fixed.
(two chairs)
on a desolate heath
between mountain ridges
by the shore of a lake
lies a little stone cabin
its low broad door hewn of rough wood
we peek inside
and see the light fall
at a slant in broad twin stripes
down from the high window frame
across the chalky rough surface of the wall
below the window, pushed into the corner
two spindled chairs with straw seats stand
pressed together tightly
as if shrinking from an unwelcome visit
from a person
who might break in with the whole burden of loneliness
collapse onto one of the chairs
and start a monologue to which there is no reply
(cell)
we imagine a person
in a room
with masonry walls, paint peeling
the only furnishing
a wash basin and a radiator
mounted beside
a bolted door
a holding cell
for locking up and keeping
unfortunate times, uncomfortable skin colours
confusing blows against the head
the body search and deportation
of someone
who can only plead
guilty or at least to being an accomplice
to his own debasement
(auditorium)
a french museum of contemporary art
is built of thick, black petroleum pipes
angled with elbow joints
against walls of snow white marble
cool, formal as antique columns
in a landscape of light
we listen to sophisticated french theories
about transmodern space-time works
at the new millenium
we don’t know what to believe
having lost our old imperatives
locked in the illusions of art and knowledge
wandering in the dizzying state
of europe
no exits are visible
the eye’s only way out is through a barred window
with a view past the treetops
to a red sunset
glowing like a detonation
mirrored in the glistening oily black surface
we tread carefully
we do not know how far it is to the bottom
(face)
the picture of a human being
a face, objective as fate
face to face with silence and the room
the portrait of a young woman approaching death
portrayed like a thing among other things
against a rough brick wall, a broken pipe
a doorway, and this questioning
almost wanting to beg
for forgiveness
being as face
a human being who will soon not be
a human being squarely facing nothingness
wondering, it is the eye that sees
the clear eye
that does not want to know any more
(box)
a box not yet opened
no one knows what’s inside, empty or full
of small things, treasures, a dead man’s belongings
codes left behind that no one wants to break
no heirs have come forward
no one has claimed the memories
maybe no one knows where to find the key
but the box will never disappear
from a person’s inventory
we all carry with us such black, rectangular boxes
when we leave home, get married and
break up to set off on new
and equally dubious journeys
(witness)
we are modest witnesses
to what we see
we are responsible for what we report
from strange, fossilized places
in accounts of hardening, dehumanizing, disintegrating
and dinosauric experience
in evolution’s gradual, skillful
contact with matter
time’s distances
are burning their ice ages
into our palms
like liquid nitrogene
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