Hägring
Allt du byggt är en hägring.
Rinner snart genom dina fingrar.
Kvar kan du bara lämna kärlek.
Tiden visar oss ingen nåd.
Som sandkorn för vinden.
Är vi jämlika i tidens öken.
Mirage
Everything you built is but a mirage.
Soon slipping through your fingers.
Only love you can leave behind.
Time show us no mercy.
Like grains of sand in the wind.
We are equals to the desert of time.
It is better to be loved than remembered, ha de Gött!
There's a path to Nowhere,
I walk alone,
discovering each step Somewhere,
winding on its own.
Each footprint on my distance,
on time's vast sea,
choices in the branching chance,
soon covered in snow.
Swedish version
Det går en stig till Ingenstans,
jag går ensam,
upptäcker varje steg, Någonstans,
vindlar sig fram.
varje fotspår på min distans,
på tidens uppsjö,
val i förgreningens chans,
täcks snart av snö.
What’s hidden in snow, will show in thaw. Ha de Gött!
English version below.
Mörkret tränger sig på.
Ljuset fladdrar i människors hjärtan,
hoppas att stormen drar förbi.
Ur rädslor väller svart rök,
döljer hoppets ljus.
Blinda tittar vi på.
Glada att inte vi, behöver utstå smärtan,
inte jag, någon annan måste det bli.
Darrar under skuggans hök,
vallas till grus.
English version
The darkness presses in.
The light flickers in people's hearts,
hoping the storm will pass.
From fears, black smoke pours,
hiding the light of hope.
Blindly we watch.
Glad that it's not us, who must endure the pain,
not me, it must be someone else.
Trembling under the shadow's hawk,
herded to dust.
Still believe in the light, ha de Gött!
Ghosts
shadows, in a wink of the eye,
chased, by the obduracy of time,
flickering, by like ghosts,
Spöken
skuggor, i en blinkning,
jagade, av tidens obeveklighet,
flimrar, förbi som spöken,
All that counts is how did you love, ha de Gött!
My absolute favourite Swedish poet is Gustaf Fröding (1860 – 1911). This brilliant poet and author’s short life was darkened with mental illness. Both his own and his parents. Perhaps this is evidence that brilliance and folly dances on a razor sharp edge.
He is still a popular poet in Sweden. The poems are highly musical and lends itself to musical setting. He is one the poets with the highest number of his poems that have been set to music. Many of them topping the charts for weeks on.
Many of his brilliant poems are written in the melodic dialect from his home province Värmland. In my mind the most beautiful Swedish dialect. Even if a person with this dialect is really angry with you it sounds like a declaration of love. The dialect is often a challenge to understand by Swedish speakers and then to translate to English!
Even so an Englishman named Mike McArthur took on the task with Frödings most loved poems. He did an excellent job and to that I’m glad to be able to share one of the poems in English. This poem was a great comfort to me when I lost my son four years ago.
Solace
When comes deep sorrow, as when night descending
in wildest forests, where man goes astray,
who trusts the glimmer, which ahead is wending,
the light that peeps out, flickers, hides away?
In fun it flickered, in fun fled this caper,
who takes a Jack o'lantern for a taper?
No, grieve till in the brain the numbness creeping
in weary torpor, is the solace found
- just like the wanderer, who was lost and sleeping
of soft and mossy down, a sleep so sound.
And when from misty depths he wakes from dreaming,
sees in the wooded hide the morn sun gleaming.
There is a Fröding society that published this as a year book in 2023. You can find them on the web here. Only in Swedish, but Google translate or Chat GPT can help. Seems this is the only way to get a copy of this book. You can also find out more on Wikipedia where there are some links to more of his works in English.
Ha de Gött!
UlleHaddock 