Towards New Shores by Dag Hammarskjöld

[Passion of the Poets]

                                        (Dag Hammarsksjold on June27, 1955, cover of Time Magazine)

If you are unfamiliar with him, Dag Hammarskjöld was the Swedish author of the classic Markings, which was published after his death. He was also a diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953 until 1961, the year in which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and also when he died.

  

TOWARDS NEW SHORES

Quiet – as when long bitterness breaks in tears: bare ground.
Soft light over wide, shimmering waters –
Around me soft walls of thaw and haze, low ceiling of clouds, mauve from the setting sun.
In the lake’s world of mirrors, pale olive and pewter, bare alder branches are reflected, swayed by slow, invisible waves.

And then:

Around the lone flame an embrace of warm light in the soft darkness. The white clouds of hyacinth over the mirror, the deep, sombre well. Glimpses of tree trunks in a whispering forest of books.

Not for us, perhaps never for us:

Through the silence the jarring telephone signal from conversations we fled from but shall not escape. Beneath the calm your memory whispers of promises and the peace of burdens shared.
No rest if it is not everybody’s, no peace until all has been fulfilled.

 

By Dag Hammarskjöld (from Africa! My Africa!) 
(Translated from the Swedish by Lennart and Gillian Nilsson

[Author-Poet Aberjhani]

I used to have a copy of MARKINGS and reading this has made me want to either find it or buy a new one. Much gratitude,

Aberjhani