Karin Boye: The Swallows

Hurrying, arrowing swallows, on wings resting

high in the blue expanses,

wind-light in whistling gusts

scorning the earth’s inertness –

like a laugh of ridicule,

clear, light, ringing,

with contempt your flight meets our hearts' weight,

like a jubilation,

leaping from heights,

tidings of space’s own

power that plays, and light can penetrate...

Sun goes down,

but up there lingers all the day’s grand state,

round about you,

high in a playfully won,

airy place, happy, fortunate.

From the collection The Hearths (1927), tr. David McDuff. Most aspects of Boye's life were tragically unhappy: she trained and worked as a psychologist, and may have been one of those who enter that field in the hope of understanding their own difficulties. It's hard to read The Swallows as anything other than a poem of yearning for escape from "our hearts' weight".