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    THE UNKNOWN ONE


    I have never seen your healing hand.
    You come in the dark, when no one knows.
    I wait in silence and reliance shy
    in loneliness.

    You my sister and mother, you and I and not I,
    your name is night, an enigma's dark sun,
    I sense you immense and mighty and blind
    and soundlessly dumb.

    You know depths of horrors I have not seen,
    I tremble to break your law's secret way,
    But you know a solace mild denied to me
    by sunbright day.

    I have silently hidden in you my wound
    and ached among thorns till my soul was bare.
    In the darkness you touched the bush - it leapt
    into wild roses there.


    Translated into English by David McDuff in "Karin Boye: Complete poems".

    Swedish original



    Copyright © 2005:
    Translation from Swedish into English: David McDuff

    Published with the permission of:
    David McDuff, translation.
    May and Hans Mehlin, Layout.

    For more information, please visit the website of David McDuff and his own pages with the translations.

     
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