Ballad Of The Paths In Vastmanland
by Lars Gustafsson
Translated, from the Swedish, by Christopher Middleton and the author.
 

Under the visible script of small tracks,
gravel tracks, forest tracks, often with a grass
ridge in the middle, between deep ruts
hidden beneath twigs heaped in clearings,
still distinct in crumbling moss,
another script runs— the old paths.
They lead from lake to lake, from valley
to valley. Sometimes deeper furrows,
more distinct, and sturdy bridges
of medieval stone carry them over black streams;
sometimes they evaporate on bare rocky ground;
you lose them easily in swamps, so
imperceptibly that one moment they are there
and the next not. They do go on,
always there's a going on, you only have
to seek, the paths are obstinate,
they know what they want, and with that knowledge
they combine considerable cunning.
You walk east, the compass points insistently east,
faithfully the path follows the compass, like a streak,
all is well, then the path veers north.
And north there's nothing. What does the path want?
Soon comes an enormous moor, and the path knew it.
It leads us around, with the certainty of someone who knows
what's what. It knows where the moor is;
it knows where the hill is too steep; it knows
what happens to someone who circles the lake
to the north instead of south. It has done it all,
so many times, before. That's the whole
point of being a path— it came to be made
long ago. Who made it? Charcoal burners, fisherfolk,
women with skinny arms gathering firewood?
The outlaws, shysters, gray as the moss—
still in their dreams the blood of fratricide
reddens their hands. Autumn hunters on the tracks
of pointer dogs with barks clear as frost?
All of them, none of them. We make the path together,
you, too, on a stormy day, on earth,
be the hour late or early—
we write the paths and they stick,
and the paths are more clever than us,
and they know all the things we wanted to know.