It’s rather quiet. The clonging from the churchbells’ buckets collecting water. And someone’s unrelenting cough telling off everything and everyone. A stone idol is moving its lips: it’s the city. Where iron-hard misunderstandings rule among kiosk-attendants butchers sheet-metal workers naval officers iron-hard misunderstandings, academics. How my eyes ache! They’ve been reading by the glowworm-lamps’ faint light. November offers caramels of granite. Unpredictable! Like world history laughing at the wrong place. But we hear the clonging from the churchbells’ buckets when they collect water every Wednesday —is it Wednesday?— that’s what’s become of our Sundays! It was a funeral and I sensed the dead man was reading my thoughts better than I could. The organ kept quiet, birds sang. The hole out in the blazing sun. My friend’s voice lingered in the minutes’ farthest side. I drove home seen through by the summer day’s brilliance by rain and stillness seen through by the moon. A cuckoo perched and who-whoed in a birch just north of the house. It was so loud that at first I thought an opera singer was performing a cuckoo-imitation. Surprised I even saw the bird. Its tail-feathers moved up and down with every note, like the handle on a pump. The bird hopped, feet together, turned and cried out to all four directions. Then it lifted off and, muttering, flew over the house and far away to the west. . The summer is growing old and everything flows together into a single melancholy sigh. Cuculus canorus is returning to the tropics. Its time in Sweden is through. It wasn’t long! In fact, the cuckoo is a citizen of Zaire. . I am not so fond of making journeys anymore. But the journey visits me. Now when I’m pushed more and more into a corner, when every year the tree rings widen, when I need reading glasses. There’s always more happening than we can bear! It’s nothing to be surprised about. These thoughts bear me as faithfully as Susi and Chuma bore Livingstone’s mummified body straight across Africa.
I The knight and his lady were petrified but happy on a flying coffin lid outside of time. II Jesus held up a coin with Tiberius in profile a profile without love the power in circulation. III A dripping sword obliterates memories. The ground is rusting trumpets and sheaths.
