[I have become wealthy in a foreign land]
I have become wealthy in a foreign land
gravity makes me sick in
my slippery throat the devil makes me lousy
with summer like I'm buried in the sun
in its sounds
with my mother
there's something about having
a heart beat like traffic
like wind I did it afterall: I had a sweaty
body in Berlin it was all right
I'm taking some time out
from being alive with daughters
It's OK I'm impersonating a kiss
of lilacs a murder of crows
are settling over my corpse the dust
covers my photographs I only
ever write about childhood
because that was before I died
and now the devil has brought me
back to Berlin in summer
in Stockholm I'm starting to make sense
of my body which is becoming
buried in pop music and now ooh-ooh
I have to rebuild the wall
an erotics based on occupation
I write you a letter ett brev
about my body as if it were
split between foreign words
whispered by stringy angels
and soldiers who march in
through the eye of a needle
I write my body with the eye
of a needle with nålen I write
when I'm sick with gravity
in summer in summer
I'm sick in light summer light
musical light from hell and you
dare call it heaven
my body you dare to call it heaven
Copyright Credit: Johannes Göransson, "[I have become wealthy in a foreign land]." Copyright © 2018 Johannes Göransson. Used by permission of the author for PoetryNow, a partnership between the Poetry Foundation and the WFMT Radio Network.
Source: PoetryNow (2018)