THE TABLE Poem by Lennart Sjögren

With your angled surface you stand there
and consider us
you watch us
when we come, when we sit down, when we go.

You are rectangular in shape
and defend thereby the idea of the square
you overflow, you sag under laughter, elbows
plates and the glasses that rise and fall above you
you help to make night into day.

But most clearly I see you
when you stand consumed in empty rooms
and you look more like an autopsy table
than a place for festal dishes.

One day I saw the dead sitting round you
they were eating of the silence.

Patiently you listen to the political documents
you accept pamphlets
both before and after the eating
but independently of that you have your own face
your inaccessibility.
In your silence
you resemble the walls
what you know of sorrow and happiness surpasses most of it.

You make yourself ready for another feast
already you can sense that fever
that prepares the wood's unravelling.
You stare at me fixedly, you are beyond fear
and when at last you are chopped up for firewood
or reach the rubbish tip you have already entered on the new feast.