Sweden, (b. 1950)
CHICAGO
- Having followed an instrument maker to a Chicago slaughterhouse and stood at the end of the conveyor belt picking out pieces of bone suitable for harpsichord keys, and having subsequently grasped Emerson’s transcendental points about Aquinas and his scholastic break with the accepted and (in the literal sense) metaphysical problems of the resurrection, I want to propose herewith, in ample time for the next assembly of churches, a memorandum concerning cannibals and animals. Considering that cannibals are now a dying race without sufficient access to their traditional diet, we should, as a deterrent and also for the sake of ethnological research, make life easier for the few tribes still hanging on by the skin of their teeth outside the aegis of the Church. The situation of domestic animals is less precarious, but they don’t want to be turned into food and have actually never chosen to be served on our plates. Pigs are slaughtered under protest that squeals to high heaven. They want to go back to their fetid stalls and wallow in the mud and await eternal life, which by right ought to be available even to them. The pig wants to be pieced back together again, to be made whole again so he can scratch himself happy against a rouch board. And the velvet-eyed veal calves crammed in their crates dream of being granted just one glimpse of the sky’s blue face. Most of all they want to live forever, exactly like us!
- Translated from the Swedish by Jean Pearson
About the Poet:
Tommy Olofsson, Sweden, (b. 1950), is an author, translator educator and a literary critic for the Swedish Daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. He is also an academic lecturer and a Professor emeritus of Creative Writing at Linnaeus University.
Olofsson has published several books on literature and more than twelve collections of poetry which have been translated into a dozen languages.
Translator, Jean E. Pearson, United States, (1945-2017), was an educator, poet and translator. She earned both her MA and doctorate in German Literature from Cornell University in 1972. She then taught German at Moravian College from 1972 until 1985.
Pearson traveled to Sweden where she met poet Tommy Olofsson and agreed to translate his poems into English. She supsequently did translations of many Swedish and German poets. A collection of her own poetry, On Speaking Terms With Earth was published in 1988. [DES-10/21]