Världens bästa dikt?

Man kan inte räkna dem alla
sägner och sånt man hör...
Det sägs att en stjärna ska falla
var gång när en människa dör -

Lyhörd i nätternas kyla
och vindarnas frusna musik
hundarna hörde jag yla,
som hundarna yla för lik,

änkorna hörde jag skrika
och barnen snyfta för bröd -
- Stjärnorna kvittar det lika
om någon är född eller död.

Nils Ferlin

Finns också tonsatt; Min favorit är Roffe Wikströms version, hans karaktäristiska bluessound passar perfekt till texten.

Cosmic Gall av John Updike:

NEUTRINOS, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
and painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
and pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed-you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.

Jag tar början på ännu en fantastisk dikt. Även här är författarnamnet överflödigt

I CELEBRATE myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs
to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of
summer grass.

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes — the
shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and
like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I
shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste
of the distillation, it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become
undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzzed whispers, love-root, silk-
thread, crotch, vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my
heart, the passing of blood and air through
my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of
the shore and dark-colored sea-rocks, and of
hay in the barn,
The sound of the belched words of my voice,
words loosed to the eddies of the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching
around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the
supple boughs wag,
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or
along the fields and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song
of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much?
have you reckoned the earth much?
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of
poems?

Tro det eller ej, men jag hade bara läst den i svensk översättning tidigare. Det verkar vara väldigt svårt att få tag på en av de amerikanska 1800-talsutgåvorna av boken, till ett i mitt tycke rimligt pris.

Och varför ska man nödvändigtvis ha en 1800-talsutgåva av den? Om du inte redan visste det så kan jag avslöja en sak: dikterna är precis de samma i nyutgåvorna...

Därför att innehållet är inte allt för en samlare av gamla böcker. Jag råkar vara speciellt förtjust i 1800-talets bokutstyrslar.

Då förstår jag. Jag gillar också gamla böcker (var därför som jag köpte fyra band av "Uppfinningarnas bok").

Hopplös som man är, kan jag rekommendera Martinssons samling "Nomad". En längtare som jag kan hitta stora delar av sig själv där.

Är man hopplös om man gillar ”Nomad”?

Nä, men jag är hopplös, och jag gillar Nomad. Jag har så lätt att se framför mig hur Harry kommer till sthlm med sitt tält och sin livsvisdom. Min hjärna spottar ur sig stereotypa metaforer som "med de sju havens djup i sina sorgsna ögon kom han till den kalla staden". Berör mig som fan.

Tack Caine_Gothenburg för stt du körde igång denna väldigt intressanta tråd. Ett anspråkslöst förslag från min sida är:

ANNABEL LEE.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea :
But we loved with a love that was more than love —
I and my ANNABEL LEE ;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE ;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me —
Yes ! — that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we —
Of many far wiser than we —
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE :

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE ;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE ;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.


Edgar Allan Poe, that is.

detta är en av mina stora favorit dikter







Daddy
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been sacred of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You----

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagersnever liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.