Two Poems (translation by Bradley Harmon)

Say More

Multiplicity – faults in line
a word’s inherent
simplicity
death by repetition
see a fault where it lies

the rainbow hasn’t spoken to you for awhile
the colors in the reproduction make you sick

but the children at the rainbow’s root
did you see
when the words came back

everything must be called something and
everything dies of repetition

words
turn yourself inside out
or disappear

and say again and again
that everything beneath the firmament exists in synchronicity

Säg mer

Mångfald – fålar i rader
ett ords inneboende
enfald
död av upprepning
ser en fålla där det står

regnbågen säger dig inget på länge
färgerna i återgivningen gör en sjuk

men barnen i regnbågsstammen
såg du
när orden kom åter

någonting måste allt heta och
allting dör av att upprepas

ord
vänd dig ut och in
eller försvinn

och säg igen och igen
att allt under himlens fäste finns i samtidighet

A Form

I enter into a form, one inflated
like a cloud, itself a kind of being

the curious word atmosphere
a form of invisibility
long like love

the vessels of high voices dispersed
the voiceflow of the dearly departed forms
a bowl from below

resonance

fills the form tightened by the hands
that formed my body
by washing and caring, with the pitch
that pushed into motion the wave of being
a person within

En Form

Jag går i en form, en bolmande
liksom ett moln, som är ett varande

det underliga ordet luftlagren
en form i osynligheten
lång kärlek lik

kärlen av de höga rösterna som skingrats
de älskade försvunnas stämlinje formar
en skål underifrån

resonans

går i formen som skruvats av händerna
som formade min kropp
med tagningen och omsorgen, med tonläget
som gjorde vågen av rörelsen att vara
någon inombords

—

Katarina Frostenson (b. 1953) is one of the most notable living Nordic poets. The author and translator of over thirty volumes, her work has had a major influence on contemporary Swedish poetry. She has in addition written dramas, prose, and an opera libretto, and translated works by Duras, Bataille, Bove, and Michaux. Frostenson has received nearly every literary prize in Sweden and many across Europe. She was awarded the 2016 Nordic Council Literature Prize for the 2015 collection Sånger och formler, forthcoming in autumn 2024 in English as The Space of Time. In 2019-2021, she released the autofictional trilogy K, F, and A, the first of which premiered as a stage play in October 2022 at the Folkteatern in Gothenburg. Her latest book, Alma, appeared in November 2023. 

Bradley Harmon (b. 1994) is a writer, translator, and scholar of Nordic and German literature, film, and philosophy. Currently a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University, he has been an American Scandinavian Foundation fellow at Södertörn University and an Emerging Translator mentee with the American Literary Translator’s Association. His forthcoming translations include Katarina Frostenson’s The Space of Time (Threadsuns Press, October 2024) and Birgitta Trotzig’s A Landscape (Sublunary Editions, November 2024). He is also co-editor of the volume Rilke’s Poetry and the Horizons of Phenomenology (De Gruyter, 2025) and of a special dossier on translation and literary citizenship in the American academy (MLN 138.5, 2023).