Skogspromenad - A walk in the Swedish fir and spruce woods.

Yesterday I took a walk in the forest, and I felt so relaxed. High and strong stood the fir trees and mosses and lingonberries were growing below. On the spruce forest floor the blueberry bushes were light green and the berries were on the way, almost ready to pick. I had a pre-taste, since I found a few blue ones among the green, not yet ripe, ones. I love the Swedish woods, despite the fact that it has pretty few species; I think fir and spruce stand for about 80 % of the trees growing in the Swedish woods.

Over it all were the white fluffy clouds and blue sky, and you could hear a raven call out.

A old saying comes to mind:

Lyss till den granens sus, vid vars fot ditt bo är fästat.

[translation:  Listen to that spruce's sound, by which feet your home is tied.]

Only two or three generations away, all Swedes were living close to the nature. Not so much today.

Congratulations! Five years ago....

...to the day, this blog was born.  Thanks for hanging out here now and then, and reading our thoughts, looking at our photos, and thinking about stuff with us.  Like today, five years ago it was a very green, springy day and that was reflected in the first blog post, reposted below. 
_____________________________________

Wow, första posten/first post!  
Don't worry, not everything will be written in two languages, and posts and comments in either Swedish or English are fine.
Today is a beautiful day here in New Jersey, flowers everywhere, spring has sprung!
Or as the Swedish poet Gustaf Fröding said:

Ett grönt blad på marken
Grönt! Gott,
friskt, skönt vått!
Rik luft, mark!
Ljuvt stark,
rik saft,
stor kraft!
Friskt skönt
grönt!

A green leaf on the ground
Green! Good,
Fresh, nice wet!
Rich air, land!
Deliciously strong,
rich sap,
big power!
Fresh nice,
green!

OK snapshot: Meddelanden från andra sidan... (Messages from the other side)

...av kontorsfönstret mot gatan. :)
...from the office by the street. [Seen in Stockholm, Sweden]

What is says? - oh!

Don't despair nightinggale!

Out of the deep it grows

We are disguised.

And the night streams

from east to west with

the speed of the moon.

Poem by Candace Black: Mr. D Shops At Fausto’s Food Palace

This poem really brings back the previous times when locavore food (locally sourced food) was the normal. Can't you just imagine the fish counter in this little store after reading this?

__________________________________

American Life in Poetry: Column 356

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Nothing brings a poem to life more quickly than the sense of smell, and Candace Black, who lives in Minnesota, gets hold of us immediately, in this poem about change, by putting us next to a dumpster.

Mr. D Shops At Fausto’s Food Palace

For years he lived close enough to smell

chicken and bananas rotting

in the trash bins, to surprise a cashier on break

smoking something suspicious when he walked

out the back gate. Did they have an account?

He can’t remember. Probably so, for all the milk

a large family went through, the last-minute

ingredients delivered by a smirking bag boy.

He liked to go himself, the parking lot’s

radiant heat erased once he got past the sweating

glass door, to troll the icy aisles in his slippers.

This was before high-end labels took over

shelf space, before baloney changed

its name to mortadella, before water

came in flavors, before fish

got flown in from somewhere else.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Candace Black, from her most recent book of poetry, Casa Marina, RopeWalk Press, 2010. Reprinted by permission of Candace Black and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2012 by The Poetry Foundation.

Reposted here with permission.

Tranströmer - tired of words

During the Nobel Prize party a few days ago, the wife of Thomas Tranströmer, the Novel Laureate in Literature, read this wonderful poem by him:  

Trött på alla som kommer med ord, ord, men inget språk
for jag till den snötäckta ön.
Det vilda har inga ord.
De oskrivna sidorna breder ut sig åt alla håll!
Jag stöter på spåren av rådjursklövar i snön.
Språk men inga ord.

Tired of everybody that comes with words, words, but no language

I traveled to the snow-covered island.

The wild has no words.

The unwritten pages extend outwards in all directions!

I discover the tracks of deer hooves in the snow.

Language but no words.

Thomas Tranströmer [translation by LS]

I can see it in front of me, an island surrounded by frozen water in winter, stillness, no people, just the man and the snow, frozen bare branches, blue icy sky, and a few birds looking for something to eat in the brush.  And then the tracks of the deer, winding its way through the landscape, telling a story without words.

Winter Sun, a photo from the Finnish Baltic archipelago by Niklas Sjöblom (Flickr)

In a way this also reminds me of a very different poem/song, Blå Hjärtans Blues, by Eva Dahlgren.  In English, the song (called Blue Hearts' Blues) starts with these lines (translated by me):

The island lays empty in the winter sea

a last ferry turns back towards the city

at the pier, here I stand

and see my lover choose

My head so heavy of the truth

I see your foot tracks in the snow on the way home

so light steps that say so much more

than frozen words on your lips

Bye baby blue
caresses me in the night

with her sadness
bye baby blue
all these memories

in a dull moonlight blue tune
[cont.]

That is the beginning of this song about relationships, break-ups, winter, ice, and islands, just like Tranströmer's poem. The blues song ('bye baby blue', etc.) she refers to I guess is something by Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday. Listen to Eva performing the song here: Youtube link, and here are the complete Swedish lyrics.

November

It is something special with the autumn.


November med skiftningar av ädelt pälsverk
[November with Nuances of Noble Fur]
skrivet av nobelpristagaren i litteratur 2011 Tomas Tranströmer
[written by Nobel Prize winner in Literature 2011, Tomas Tranströmer]

Just det att himlen är så grå
får marken själv att börja lysa:
ängarna med sitt skygga gröna,
den paltbrödsmörka åkerjorden

Det finns en ladas röda vägg.
Och det finns marker under vatten
som blanka risfält i Asien-
där stannar måsarna och minns

Disiga tomrum mitt i skogen
som klingar sakt mot varann.
Inspiration som lever skymd
och flyr i skogen som Nils Dacke.
 ____________________
Update and translation by LS

Arrows in the soil...

(LS: A wonderful poem about times past and connections between now and then)


American Life in Poetry: Column 337 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

South Dakota poet Leo Dangel has written some of the best and truest poems about rural life that I’m aware of. Here’s a fine one about a chance discovery. 


Behind the Plow

I look in the turned sod
for an iron bolt that fell
from the plow frame
and find instead an arrowhead
with delicate, chipped edges,
still sharp, not much larger
than a woman’s long fingernail.
Pleased, I put the arrowhead
into my overalls pocket,
knowing that the man who shot
the arrow and lost his work
must have looked for it
much longer than I will
look for that bolt.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©1987 by Leo Dangel, whose most recent book of poems is The Crow on the Golden Arches, Spoon River Poetry Press, 2004. Poem reprinted from A Harvest of Words: Contemporary South Dakota Poetry, Patrick Hicks, Ed., Pine Hill Press, Inc., 2010, by permission of Leo Dangel and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation.

Tranströmer - oh yes.

Another great Swedish poet is getting the Nobel prize: Tomas Tranströmer.  The other one was Harry Martinson, one of my absolute favorites.  I haven 't read much of Transtromer, but what I have seen so far id fantastic. it is very different from Martinson's poetry, indeed. Congratulations!

Some reactions from American press:
The New Yorker
The New York Times
Poets.org
NPR


and a poem, with translation by me:

MINUSGRADER by Tomas Tranströmer (ur SANNINGSBARRIÄREN 1978)

Vi är på en fest som inte älskar oss. Till sist låter festen sin mask falla och visar sig som den verkligen är: en växlingsbangård. Kalla kolosser står på skenor i dimman. En krita har klottrat på vagnsdörrarna.

Det får inte nämnas, men här finns mycket undertryckt våld. Därför är detaljerna så tunga. Och så svårt att se det andra som också finns: en solkatt som flyttar sig på husväggen och glider genom den ovetande skogen av flimrande ansikten, ett bibelord som aldrig skrevs: 'Kom till mig, ty jag är motsägelsefull som du själv.'

I morgon arbetar jag i en annan stad. Jag susar dit genom morgontimman som är en stor svartblå cylinder. Orion hänger ovanför tjälen. Barn står i en tyst klunga och väntar på skolbussen, barn som ingen ber för. Ljuset växer sakta som vårt hår.

BELOW ZERO by Tomas Tranströmer, translation by LS

We are at a party that doesn't love us.  Finally the party lets its mask fall off and shows what it really is: a railroad switchyard.  Cold giants stand on rails in the fog. A chalk has scribbled on the rail car doors.

It can't be mentioned, but here is much suppressed violence.  Therefore the details are so heavy.  And so hard to see the other things that also exist: a reflection from the sun that moves along the building wall and glides through the unknown forest of unaware faces, a bibel quote that never was written: "Come to me, because I am as contradictory as yourself."

Tomorrow I work in another town. I whirl there through the morning hour that is a large blackblue cylinder. Orion is hanging over the frozen ground. Children are standing in a quiet group and waiting for the school bus, children that nobody is praying for.  The light is growing as slow as our hair.

Life and love in words

This wonderful poem showed up in my e-mail inbox today:

American Life in Poetry: Column 321
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

For me, the most worthwhile poetry is that which reaches out and connects with a great number of people, and this one, by Joe Mills of North Carolina, does just that. Every parent gets questions like the one at the center of this poem.

 How You Know 
How do you know if it’s love? she asks,
and I think if you have to ask, it’s not,
but I know this won’t help. I want to say
you’re too young to worry about it,
as if she has questions about Medicare
or social security, but this won’t help either.
“You’ll just know” is a lie, and one truth,
“when you still want to be with them
the next morning,” would involve too
many follow-up questions. The difficulty
with love, I want to say, is sometimes
you only know afterwards that it’s arrived
or left. Love is the elephant and we
are the blind mice unable to understand
the whole. I want to say love is this
desire to help even when I know I can’t,
just as I couldn’t explain electricity, stars,
the color of the sky, baldness, tornadoes,
fingernails, coconuts, or the other things
she has asked about over the years, all
those phenomena whose daily existence
seems miraculous. Instead I shake my head.
I don’t even know how to match my socks.
Go ask your mother. She laughs and says,
I did. Mom told me to come and ask you.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Joe Mills, whose most recent book of poetry is Love and Other Collisions, Press 53, 2010. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 16, no. 1, Summer 2010, by permission of Joe Mills and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2011 by The Poetry Foundation.

Spring must have sprung today

OK, spring is here finally in my mind and for real in New Jersey, even if there will be a late April snowstorm.  I am sitting outside at a table at an open square in Princeton (using the Princeton Library's fantastic free wireless network), and it is 68 degrees or so (that is 18 degrees in Swedish numbers).  Warm soft air, pretty lights on trees, laptop on park table, and a couple of tables away a guitarist is playing the most amazing instrumental pieces, just for fun.  Wait, it is a guitarist and a banjoist.  Someone is eating grilled fish at the Witherspoon Grill, I can smell it. Kids are running around in shorts and T-shirts, laughing; people are sitting outside restaurants having dinner and a glass of wine.  No stars above because we are waiting for heavy rains tomorrow, which hopefully will help our newly moved perennials take off with new roots and growth.  Life is lovely.  Or as I read earlier tonight in a photo in a library book: 

Life is wonderful.

Reclaim the Awe. 

I agree 100%.  We should all reclaim the awe.  And not overuse the word awesome (which I am guilty of, just as most teenagers of today, but that fad will pass too).

Learning Swedish through Swedish music classics

There is so much great music in Swedish that never made it outside the borders.  A person in nearby me is currently learning Swedish and she loves music, so this is for her - listen and learn!  (And the rest of you can as well, of course.)

Sofia Karlsson, a fantastic young artist, recorded a new version of my favorite Peps Persson's 80's blues and reggae song För livet ('For life') in 2007, a song that I heard over and over again growing up and loved.  Peps version is filled by his 'skånska' accent from southernmost Sweden, but Sofia's version turns it more into a folk ballad.  You can listen to Sofia's version here. And here are the lyrics, line by line, with translation (literal, as much as possible) in parentheses.  Enjoy!

This song is a homage to all living things, all species.  Peps Persson has written several songs on this theme, and also songs that criticize society, capitalism, and materialism.  Som of this more famous song titles are (in translation): High Standard, False Mathematics, Oh Boy, and The Totally Fooled Generation.

Jag spelar för livet,      [I'm playing for life]

för allting som växer      [for everything that grows]
som lever och andas,       [that lives and breaths]

och föds och dör.          [and get born and dies]
Jag spelar för livet,      [I'm playing for life]

jag vet inget annat        [I don't know anything else]
som ger både mening        [that gives both meaning]

och dagligt bröd           [and daily bread]
Jag spelar för livet,      [I'm playing for life]

jag sjunger för full hals  [I'm singing out loud ('full throat')]
Jag leker med toner        [I'm playing with tunes]

och kysser ord             [and kissing words]
Jag spelar för livet,      [I'm playing for life]

med huvudet i himlen       [with the head in heaven]
och fötterna dansar        [and the feet are dancing]

på Moder jord              [on Mother Earth]

Jag spelar för livet, natt och dag [I'm playing for life, night and day]
Jag spelar för livet, sådan är jag [I'm playing for life, that's how I am] 
Jag spelar för livet, dag och natt [I'm playing for life, day and night] 
Jag spelar för livet, därför att   [I'm playing for life, because] 
Jag spelar för livet               [I'm playing for life]

Jag spelar för livet     [I'm playing for life]

med bultande hjärta      [with pounding heart]
och själen bräddfull     [and soul filled full]

av glädje och sorg       [with happiness and sorrow]
Jag spelar för livet     [I'm playing for life]

jag våndas, jag njuter   [I am scared, I am happy]
och säljer min möda      [and selling my work]

på månglarnas torg       [at the marketers' square]
Jag spelar för livet     [I'm playing for life]

och glömmer bort döden   [and forgetting about death]
för vid den horisonten   [because at that horizon]

syns inget ljus          [there is no light]
Jag spelar för livet     [I'm playing for life]

och litar på tiden       [and trust that time]
som alltid har växt      [which always has grown]

till nästa nu            [to the next now]

Jag spelar för livet, sådan är jag [I'm playing for life, that's how I am] 
Jag spelar för livet, natt som dag [I'm playing for life, night and day] 
Jag spelar för livet, dag och natt [I'm playing for life, day and night] 
Jag spelar för livet, som besatt   [I'm playing for life, like possessed] 
Jag spelar för livet               [I'm playing for life]

There is a Youtube video of Sofia and her band singing this song too, but the audio quality is not as good as the link above.  And, here is Peps Persson's song False Mathematics (Falsk matematik), in Swedish original, about the unfairness of rich and poor...

Book review: On the narrow road - journey into a lost Japan by Lesley Downer

On the narrow road - journey into a lost Japan, by Lesley Downer

This was not a fast book to read, but a book that takes its time.  Lesley Downer, a Japan scholar from Britain, sets out to trace the steps of the famous 17th century Japanese poet Basho and his companion of their trip to the North of Japan, through mountains and distant valleys. Basho, famous for his haiku's, wrote in detail about his trip and also wrote many haikus at the places they stayed during their 5-month long walking trip. Lesley quotes some of these in her book when she visits (or tries to, some are gone) the same places as they did.  Away from the coastal cities concrete, neon, and traffic, she is looking for a lost Japan, a country that might have some similarity to how Japan was in the 1600s, rural, peaceful, and undisturbed by the stressful, modern world..  She does find it, but it is endangered and not much left of it.

Her detailed writing gives you a fantastic introduction to Japanese medieval history, literature and haiku, and also the current and past traditions of 'regular' people.  She doesn't avoid talking about fear of foreigners, her own tiredness and embarrassments, and highlights the great people she meets by coincidence during her trip, which isn't as long as Basho's in time, and not all by foot.  She uses trains, buses, and hitchhikes, and walks where is is possible, mostly in the mountains.  I know very little about Japan, and I think this book taught be at least five times more than I knew.  Densely written at time, it is a lovely book, a book for contemplation and reading 2-3 pages at the time. Highly recommended to anybody that loves biographical stories, foreign countries, history, and literature.

Pizza poetry is cheesy

American Life in Poetry: Column 302  (posted here with special permission)

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
In Iowa in the 1950’s, when we at last heard about pizza, my mother decided to make one for us. She rolled out bread dough, put catsup on it, and baked it. Voila! Pizza! And inexpensive, too. Here’s Grace Cavalieri, a poet and playwright who lives in Maryland, serving something similar and undoubtedly better.

Tomato Pies, 25 Cents

Tomato pies are what we called them, those days,
before Pizza came in,
at my Grandmother’s restaurant,
in Trenton New Jersey.
My grandfather is rolling meatballs
in the back. He studied to be a priest in Sicily but
saved his sister Maggie from marrying a bad guy
by coming to America.
Uncle Joey is rolling dough and spooning sauce.
Uncle Joey, is always scrubbed clean,
sobered up, in a white starched shirt, after
cops delivered him home just hours before.
The waitresses are helping
themselves to handfuls of cash out of the drawer,
playing the numbers with Moon Mullin
and Shad, sent in from Broad Street. 1942,
tomato pies with cheese, 25 cents.
With anchovies, large, 50 cents.
A whole dinner is 60 cents (before 6 pm).
How the soldiers, bussed in from Fort Dix,
would stand outside all the way down Warren Street,
waiting for this new taste treat,
young guys in uniform,
lined up and laughing, learning Italian,
before being shipped out to fight the last great war.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Grace Cavalieri from her most recent book of poetry, Sounds Like Something I Would Say, Goss 183 Casa Menendez, 2010. Reprinted by permission of Grace Cavalieri and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
 ________________
How often do you read a poem about pizza and Trenton? Tomato pie (photo here) is not exactly like pizza and it is a Trentonian invention (I think I read that somewhere, but who knows if it is true.  Trenton is the capital of New Jersey and only about 40 min away from where we live. Tomato pie has thicker crust and you put the cheese on first, and then pour tomato sauce over it (someone needs to correct the Wikipedia article on this).  Upside down, kind of.  Thanks all Italians for pizza, we are having some tomorrow night.  This photo from Little Italy in 1900 is amazing, click on the photo and check out the details like the kids with napkins on their heads and all the guys' mustaches.

I love funky, gorgeous, easy, silly, beautiful poetry, and you get a lot of that if you subscribe via e-mail the series American Life in Poetry.  You can sign up for free and get one poem per week sent to you. The poems are selected by Ted Kooser, one of our favorite American poets.

Lunar happenings tonight...

There will be a full lunar eclipse tonight, which we in North America should at least be able to see, if the skies stay clear (keep your fingers crossed, right now we have scattered clouds).  In Sweden, you have to look at it right before sunrise. Not since 1638 has there been a lunar eclipse on the winter solstice. I am setting my alarm clock to get up at 2 AM to see some of it. Imagine the old vikings, celebrating around a bonfire on the solstice, and then suddenly the moonlight disappears and the moon turns dark red - how could that not be seen as a sign of some sort? 

In honor of these amazing celestial phenomena, I also would like to share a great moon poem by Molly Fisk:

Hunter's Moon

Early December, dusk, and the sky
slips down the rungs of its blue ladder
into indigo. A late-quarter moon hangs
in the air above the ridge like a broken plate
and shines on us all, on the new deputy
almost asleep in his four-by-four,
lulled by the crackling song of the dispatcher,
on the bartender, slowly wiping a glass
and racking it, one eye checking the game.
It shines down on the fox’s red and grey life,
as he stills, a shadow beside someone’s gate,
listening to winter. Its pale gaze caresses
the lovers, curled together under a quilt,
dreaming alone, and shines on the scattered
ashes of terrible fires, on the owl’s black flight,
on the whelks, on the murmuring kelp,
on the whale that washed up six weeks ago
at the base of the dunes, and it shines
on the backhoe that buried her.

(c) Molly Fisk, reprinted with permission, and you can read more about her work on her website.

Swedish Winter Tale (cont'd)

I am adding some here in English to EH's post about Monica Törnell's classic song about the Swedish winter from 1984, Vintersaga (Winter Tale), written by Ted Ström.  The original song is on Youtube.  It really describes the Swedish winter and its people in a melancholic way, all the darkness, cold, ice, and isolation. Here is a quick translation to English.  The geographic names are all over Sweden, making this song relevant for all parts of Sweden. I grew up with this song and for many, including me, it symbolizes Swedish winter and Swedish moods...

A coastal tanker is pushing through the drifting ice in Kvarken

A training pass at Ullevi in fog

The border station in Torneå, a woman on a ice kicker

Landsort's lighthouse where the snowstorm is pulling in

Dense snow is sticking on Mariaberget's slopes

Hot and sweaty at the Hotel in Härnösand

A truck in drifting snow between Kiruna and faraway

barely alive lights in Visby harbor

This is when the big moodiness is rolling in

And from the sea is a icy, gray cold wind

 

In Malmö the fog is etched by the sirens of the ferries

And on the other side of the strait the world starts

A lonely Volvo pushes in the wind on the Tjörn bridge

The Lappland train groans like a wild animal in the night

The farms are turning down their lights

A storm-whipped Marstrand prays its Pater Noster

Stockholm city is waving in its intoxication

 

This is when the big moodiness is rolling in

And from the sea is a icy, gray cold wind

 

Truck traffic in Docksta in the highway shadow

An overdose at Skärholmen station

Snowed in roads somewhere on Österlen 

And the drunkenness is growing at Mommas pub

Frozen thirst in the queue to the city pub in Luleå

Frozen dreams in the monarchy

The love has to live between the night shift and the dreams

The love lives on cheap wine

This is when the big moodiness is rolling in

And from the sea is a icy, gray cold wind

Weather report- winter in Sweden

Vintersaga ... av Ted Ström. Sjungen av Monica Törnell 1984

En kusttanker som stampar genom drivisen i Kvarken.
Ett träningspass på Ullevi i dis.
Gränsstationen i Torneå, en gumma på en spark.
Landsorts fyr där snöstormen drar in.

Tät snö som gloppar i Mariabergets backar.
Hett och svett på Statt i Härnösand.
En tradare i snörök mellan Kiruna och fjärran
flämtande ljus i Visby hamn

Det är då som det stora vemodet rullar in
Och från havet blåser en isande, gråkall vind.
I Malmö rispas dimman av färjornas sirener
Och på andra sidan sundet börjar världen.
En ensam Volvo sliter i motvinden på Tjörnbron
Bion i Pajala ger "Den sista färden"
Lapplandspilen råmar som ett vilddjur genom natten
Gårdarna släcker sina ljus
Ett stormpiskat Marstrand ber sitt Pater Noster
Stockholm city svajar i sitt rus

Det är då som det stora vemodet rullar in
Och från havet blåser en isande, gråkall vind.

Tradarfik i Docksta i motorvägens skugga
En överdos på Skärholmens station
Insnöade vägar nånstans på Österlen
Och fyllan växer till på Mommas krog
Frusen törst i kön till stadspuben i Luleå
Frusna drömmar uti monarkin
Kärleken får leva mellan nattskiftet och drömmen
Kärleken går på billigt vin

Det är då som det stora vemodet rullar in
Och från havet blåser en isande, gråkall vind.

Poem VISION

VISION
Varje morgon vaknar LIVET
fylld av nya möjligheter
Varje morgon - nya chanser
att lämna det gamla som hindrar oss

Låt oss bejaka nuets gåvor
möta HOPPET, vår inre längtan
Låta LJUSET visa nya vägar
att dela GLÄDJE med varann

Till dig från Karin B Wahlberg

OK snapshot: A shoemaker's sole

Seen in Stockholm (I think).

Stamp of the Day: December 7 and Hawaii

Today is the 341st day of 2009. Are you ready for 2010? I am not, it feels like 2009 just started and I haven't even picked up speed yet. I need two-three months more to finish what I had planned for this year, both at work and home.

Today' date is the day Pearl Harbor was attached in 1941, Cicero was assassinated in 43 BC, Delaware was the first state in 1787 to ratify the US Constitution, US declared war on Austria in 1917, the stea locomotive Norfolk & Western 611 ran for the last time in 1994, Galileo (the spacecraft) arrived at Jupiter (yes, the planet), and the birthday of Louis Prima. And finally, it is the Cotton Candy day in the US.

Fallen leaves and fruits

September höjer sitt tak.
Det ligger en lättnad i luften
som hör hösten till.
Den kalla blötdaggen tvättar
grundligt allt den vidrör.
Äppelvinden spelar krocket
på övergivna lekplaner.
Fallfrukten rullar stötvis in
under bågar av gräs.

Harry Martinson, ur De tusen dikternas bok (2004)

The Swedish author and poet Harry Martinson is untranslatable since he is using words in new ways and meanings and invents new words by combining and changing them. My translation below only translates the meaning, not the beauty of this poem, unfortunately. The photo is by OK, taken today, of fallen maple leaves in Sweden. Seasons are a'changing...

September is raising its ceiling.
There is a relief in the air
that is typical for fall.
The cold wet dew washes
thoroughly everything it touches.
The apple wind plays crochet
on abandoned playgrounds.
The fallen fruit rolls bumpily
under bent arches of grass.