Sonja Åkesson

TRANS. BY MELISSA BOWERS

BUTTLE, GOTLAND

At the forest edge the women stumble on an overturned pot,
the berry-picker’s rancid grin from the year before.

(The snakes are there too, still smoldering
like old fear,
and the clearing where the sun spills its stink on rotted apple boughs.

Windlessness sits heavy under musty spruce pelts . . .

here the juniper—crispy as before—roasts
its tough belly on the blackthorn’s crackling grill . . .
here the scrub-pine’s gnarled poverty
—now its cones fade white-grey away from childhood-stung hands.)

Are they expecting another reunion?
Are they expecting anything beyond the barren

rattling echo
of their hesitant steps 
deeper in across 
the lunatic heather?

Sonja Åkesson (1926–1977) was a poet from the island of Gotland, Sweden. She is best known as a leading representative of the Nyenkelhet (new simplicity) movement in Swedish poetry in the 1960s, and as a voice for Swedish women’s rights. She was awarded the Ferlin Prize in 1969, and the Samfundet De Nio Grand Prize in 1974. 

Melissa Bowers lives in Seattle, Washington. Her poetry translations have previously appeared in Reunion: The Dallas Review and Scandinavian Review. Melissa also enjoys translating graphic novels, most recently Goblin Girl by Moa Romanova (Fantagraphics, 2020). Melissa has an MFA in literary translation from Fairleigh Dickinson University.