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Poetry

From “Mozart’s Third Brain”, CIV

By Göran Sonnevi
Translated from Swedish by Rika Lesser

I lay a light stone on my father’s grave, a gray stone

on the gray stone Hadn’t planned to, it just happened

Then I think: Now you have made him a Jew But then I realize

that this is about one kind of infinity, in the series of infinities

On Gallows Hill the brimstone butterfly flutters, the jay is in the tree

In the hospital my mother tells me I have been to Väderön, which we can see

in the distance Veils of mist at the foot of Kullaberg But even the smaller islands

near Väderön are visible across the sea Then I remember How water from the waves

beat into the open boat Also remember seeing the horn of a narwhal in Torekov

 

Mozart in the first brain; in the resounding second: music

We are in the excluded third, impossibly, in the counterpart, its

constant alteration, as in all other brains We are a small part

of it So music touches us, all music, past and future

As if we were in the focus of love itself, its one and only point

I listen to all the voices, I hear their care, their rage Hear all

the instruments, in all their dimensions Hear the darkness of the sound

The fine weave of light moves upward, with its voices Until even

the earth sings, from its depths My lips move in the fugue, in dissonance

In my deep smile As if all pain, all joy, simply existed

Children move restlessly The voices of the old speak of loneliness, abandonment

 

Today I bring my mother home As if she were a child

In this I feel very childish myself Yesterday I spoke with M,

B’s rescuing angel She talked about having spent the day

in Laxvik, where she’d seen the eider ducks coming, how they rose like smoke

down toward the mouth of Lagan, over the long sandy beach

I sensed early spring, the sea, gray, gray-green The visions of birds

she and B had together, that attentiveness As when B listened to

music, an unceasing astonishment It will soon be two years since he died

 

The tension between gnosis and the absence of knowledge, inside me That the

one thing that holds is what prevails through gnostic arrogance

I’ve understood this can also exist in the imageless

That arrogance, knowledge, its absence, all love, its absence, take

all forms Here I can sense the disruptions in language The invisible obstacles

pushing upward, crystal forms in the interior, those once crushed by song–

Will the song return, again, again I really cannot know that I re-

peat this, over and over again A nag warbler But also like the blackcap. . .

English

I lay a light stone on my father’s grave, a gray stone

on the gray stone Hadn’t planned to, it just happened

Then I think: Now you have made him a Jew But then I realize

that this is about one kind of infinity, in the series of infinities

On Gallows Hill the brimstone butterfly flutters, the jay is in the tree

In the hospital my mother tells me I have been to Väderön, which we can see

in the distance Veils of mist at the foot of Kullaberg But even the smaller islands

near Väderön are visible across the sea Then I remember How water from the waves

beat into the open boat Also remember seeing the horn of a narwhal in Torekov

 

Mozart in the first brain; in the resounding second: music

We are in the excluded third, impossibly, in the counterpart, its

constant alteration, as in all other brains We are a small part

of it So music touches us, all music, past and future

As if we were in the focus of love itself, its one and only point

I listen to all the voices, I hear their care, their rage Hear all

the instruments, in all their dimensions Hear the darkness of the sound

The fine weave of light moves upward, with its voices Until even

the earth sings, from its depths My lips move in the fugue, in dissonance

In my deep smile As if all pain, all joy, simply existed

Children move restlessly The voices of the old speak of loneliness, abandonment

 

Today I bring my mother home As if she were a child

In this I feel very childish myself Yesterday I spoke with M,

B’s rescuing angel She talked about having spent the day

in Laxvik, where she’d seen the eider ducks coming, how they rose like smoke

down toward the mouth of Lagan, over the long sandy beach

I sensed early spring, the sea, gray, gray-green The visions of birds

she and B had together, that attentiveness As when B listened to

music, an unceasing astonishment It will soon be two years since he died

 

The tension between gnosis and the absence of knowledge, inside me That the

one thing that holds is what prevails through gnostic arrogance

I’ve understood this can also exist in the imageless

That arrogance, knowledge, its absence, all love, its absence, take

all forms Here I can sense the disruptions in language The invisible obstacles

pushing upward, crystal forms in the interior, those once crushed by song–

Will the song return, again, again I really cannot know that I re-

peat this, over and over again A nag warbler But also like the blackcap. . .

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