760. In the Reign of the Pharaoh Totmes, by Harry Martinson

Our overseer of the rowers is going to die soon.
Although the voyage has been long he uses the leather scourge
on our gashes and chafed sores.
He takes a beaker of fermented slave-woman's milk at the overseer's
            table.

He is going to die in Dendera. We rowers have decided.
Since we will have killed him, we will all be beheaded on the sand.

Everything is happening now as it must.
All our oars are thrashing towards Dendera.
The ship is forging ahead on the water as if on a thousand feet.

(trans Robin Fulton)

Source: Chickweed Wintergreen: Selected Poems

829. Home Village, Harry Martinson

In the gardens of the home village, where earthworms
loosen the soil, the columbine still grows
and grandfather clocks cluck old-fashionedly in each house.
Smoke rises from cottages like sacrificial pillars
and to those who come from afar, from the hard toils
of the world's oceans and the brothel alleys of Barcelona,
this peaceful village is like a silent lie.
A lie one would willingly hang on to, a lie
for which one would trample down all evil truths.

(trans Robin Fulton)

Source: Chickweed Wintergreen: Selected Poems

863. March Evening, by Harry Martinson

Winterspring, nightfall, thawing.
Boys have lit a candle in a snowball house.
For the man in the evening train that rattles past,
it is a red memory surrounded by gray time,
calling, calling, out of stark woods just waking up.
And the man who was traveling never got home,
his life stayed behind, held by that lantern and that hour.

(trans Robert Bly)

Source: The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations