Lazarus (II)


I wake far into the morning
from a dream
where I, out on a rainy small-town square,
speak warmly about the Oxelösund Ironworks
in an attempt to calm an anxious mother
whose young son has just gotten a job
at the rolling mill,
by mentioning all the departments
I myself worked at during the 1960s and ’70s,
for example the Glassworks, the Lab, the Steelworks,
the Iron Sponge Plant and the Rolling Mill,
and by also emphasizing the strength of the union
and the relatively high wages,
while at the same time persuading an older woman,
whom I remember as a crane operator
right there at the rolling mill,
to join in my praise

When I come down to the kitchen
to prepare my home-shovelled muesli breakfast,
Anna is standing at the sink
scrubbing it out meticulously
in a kind of post-holiday cleaning frenzy,
while, from her smartphone,
lying on a counter nearby
with its small external speaker,
the brilliant foreign correspondent Bert Sundström is heard,
just about to cue up David Bowie’s Lazarus
from his death-mass-like album Blackstar,
which he worked so intensely to complete
in the final phase of his incurable cancer,
which took his life two days after the album’s release,
and I have to clench myself desperately
to keep from crying out loud
as I retreat upstairs to the bedroom
with the breakfast bowl

Outside, existence is ice-glazed after the night’s westerly storm,
which has scattered branches and twigs everywhere,
and life is a serious seriousness
that I grip with the whole pen
and carve into the white face of the notebook

Once, Freedom went westward,
but now it stands bewildered at the coast
with Atlantic water up over its ankles,
heavy shadow-raft silhouettes creeping over the horizon
like the floaters of old, tired eyes;
the old year ashamed
before new times
that stand perplexed, leafing through
thin and uncertain security guarantees
permeated by doubtful motives



Poetry by Ingvar Loco Nordin The PoetBay support member heart!
Written on 2025-12-28 at 13:06

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