Pigeons Poem by Håkan Sandell

Healthy metallic the pigeons
glisten in shadows of woods.
Fragile though richly so coloured,
billowing shawls of pure silk.
Slender and vividly red their
claws are so perfectly female,
also exquisite on males.
Heart beats disguised by apparel,
welcome so lithely as snakes,
sea colour high in the pine trees,
look for me after some decades.
Velvety sounds for the moment,
ringing on miniature tongues,
finding their greatness in memories.
Pigeons in sheltering spruces,
haziness turns into clearness,
in twilight the amber eyes piercing.
Also when lying there slain,
a falcon's remains in the glades,
unruly opal grey fragments
burdened by weights due to wind,
with temple-like forest surrounding.
Wings are mirrored in rivers,
embellish the light and the air.
Encountering you who condemned
polluted not copious greenery,
foliage that has in one's eye,
chased along allies and sidewalks,
scraping irregular circles
with feet that are bony deformities,
renders the picture of innocence,
well-rinsed in grey clustered grapes,
trampled alongside the street.
Traces as if made by Leonardo,
heels that have quickly retouched.
Soot blackened pigeons turn reddish,
openly obscene as in death.
Pigeons that ridiculously totter
on track from fodder to danger;
mocked and bedraggled clowns
assenting far beyond cowardice,
more locked than a candle's flame.
Still in the pigeon's blue loftiness,
cast in a statue's bold shadow,
or wings that are fully stretched
as Symbols of ethereal dreams,
the notion of once having
resided in a world that has value,
nourished by a forest's dominions.
Cynical minds will still claim that
they're just a pest and a vermin -
could pigeons by chance ever fly?
If you perhaps were to see how
sickly and ruffled they perch,
sullen in rubbish-filled gutters,
alongside their eggs are so putrid,
confronted you nakedly stand
in places where matt poetry glows
remembering all that is wasted.

Translated by Finn Printz-Påhlson