October 2011
10 posts
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.
- Edith Södergran (1925)
