Author: Elmer Diktonius

Poems

Issue 2/1982 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry

Introduction by George C. Schoolfield

The Cranes

Today the springtime shot its arrow point
into the winter’s heart:
the cranes’ crooked plow.
Today on the ice
the water splashed
half-a-yard high beneath the horse’s hooves –
may the magpie laugh cunningly
beside the ice-hole’s edge  –
beneath the snow the earth growls
the hidden bodies of the trees cry:
the cranes the cranes!

From Taggiga lågor (‘Barbed flames’, 1924)

More…