Werner Aspenström

Snow Letter
 
    Sister on the blue veranda
    I send you a letter now
    a letter written in snow
    with answers to your many questions.
    A horse and rider of snow
    will bring it to your door.
 
It is true the freedom of the plain hurts
and the king is stern in his silence.
Give me a mountain and an echo says the voice
the eyes pray often for a gentle horizon.
Your unease sister is still too great:
the tower of birds can rise on these fields
and white doves cross the night-mist
memories build their caves dreams
light their lamps.
 
What you ask about the wind is right.
Often we were called out by mistake
someone heard steps someone voices.
Always it was the same cutting wind
compounding snow with snow.
The day can be long then but those who are waiting
always have their waiting together
the wakeful share their wakefulness the sleepers
have made appointments in their sleep.
 
Of course there is warmth between us two
although we have both become snowmen
a camp fire we stretch our hands towards
even if it doesn't burn with real flames.
Those who lived for long under vaults of frost
can suddenly be lifted as if by a wave
an unknown love stream through them
a strange chorale the blood's thin organ-pipes
never let them hear.
 
    Sister on a blue veranda
    I send you a letter
    to say I'm thinking of staying
    perhaps never returning.
    I have drunk a wine of snow
    I love a woman of snow.
    Of snow the rider and horse
    who now bring the letter to your door.

 
Translation from Swedish © Robin Fulton

 

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