Lie Body
Broken on the wheel
I lie body in the flow of time
and ”…the room is so scruffy,
I can hardly breathe…”
The sun, the late-winter flame,
casts sharp shadows
across the resistance of the wall
I can measure the exact angle
with my protractor, get up
and lay it against
the white surface of the wardrobe door
08:37 at lat. 65.999° N / long. 22.027° E
The house stays calm,
its rooms crossed,
up on its hill of till,
lapping sun like a nailed-together cat
with triple-glazed eyes
and its excrement guaranteed
I lie body, loose & at ease,
yet solely responsible,
with the Wildwife 300 km southward,
at the 90-year-birthday mother Margareta,
”lights flickering from the opposite loft”
(once in a monumental power outage
on the U.S. East Coast, November 9, 1965)
”…and the heat pipes just cough…”
Yes, broken on the wheel I lie body in space,
wayfaring as a word,
not even end-shoveled yet,
but tasked, deeded;
the whole house accessible,
suddenly without competition,
the doors flung wide in Blonde On Blonde,
marching in place
in the workroom,
two doors down the upper hall;
filling the house with its more and its less,
while ”…the harmonicas play the skeleton keys in the rain…”
and the responsibility contronts me;
– the horses, the quails, the hens – not burdensome,
rather intoxicating, sweeping me out,
in turns, across the yard, into the stable,
out to the paddocks,
the bed only temporarily abandoned in this early sun-drench
over the snowfields’ dazzling white glitter,
Blonde audible through a window crack
all the way to the stable, but not into it
The cats were offered
to jump out through a kitchen window,
triple-glazed swung outward like a luxury matter,
straight out onto the great snow pile;
the result of the noisy avalanche from the roof
the other day, that shook things up –
and they took the chance, out into the sunshine,
hightailed, solar-pawed!
But I lie body between assignments,
with the plaid pulled up,
regularly jumping in and out of the hard-grip trousers
from the bankrupt ITAB
”…you said you knew, and I took your word…”
The protractor measures a gradually altered solar angle
in the Eastern bedroom,
and Dylan lifts the roof off the house
as Werner Aspenström off Södersjukhuset
when ”…the guilty undertaker sighs…”
I lie body, yard-ward,
lord of the plot
for a number of days in March,
and in the hall
“…the ragman draws circles,
up and down the block…”
while the angle slips out of joint
and the glarework wrenches,
the clockwork aches,
“...stuck inside of Mobile...”
Dylan, 25 in the hall,
soon 85;
the sun angles onward
”…and wouldn’t it be my luck
to get caught without a ticket…”
Poetry by Ingvar Loco Nordin
Written on 2026-03-11 at 15:01
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