Gunnar Ekelöf: from The Tale of Fatumeh

No, when they speak to each other
Souls are no different from birds
Nor birds different from souls
Our ears require
A multitude of words
Of carefully articulated sounds
So that what is said may be received
For birds a few suffice
Only varying in their tone of eagerness
And varying in their stress.


Published 1966, translation by W.H. Auden and Lief Sjöberg 1971. Ekelöf moved from surrealism in the 1930s to a unique identification with Byzantine and Near Eastern mysticism in the 1960s. This is one poem in a diwan, itself part of a triptych arranged according to a complex numerological system. Perhaps it isn't so much an animal poem as a poem about spiritual music - music was a constant preoccupation for Ekelöf.