Anton Lehmden Poem by Ivar Ivask

This painter floats landscapes in the sky
like kites, without gravity,
lets them hover upside down
above ground, above the scar torn
by a huge explosion right through
the earth's crust to its core.
Victory of silence. Without mankind.
Who will put the earth together again
like a universal puzzle?
Who will bring back man?
A landscape hovers above earth
like a verdant cloud.
And an immaculate dawn.


Northfield's snowabundant winters
stored in memory forever,
crisscrossed snowdrifts,
long white wool socks
warm the slender legs of spruces.
Yellowhammer taps the window,
begs for golden grains of summer
but in vain: the sea of time
is frozen fast, of all the seasons
only one is with us.