Good for Göran!

You can read his work in Rika Lesser’s translation in A Child Is Not a Knife : Selected Poems of Göran Sonnevi, Winner of the 1993 Translation Prize of the American -Scandinavian Foundation, published by Princeton University Press.

Here is a section from Sonnevi’s poem Mozart’s Third Brain, in Lesser’s version, from the Words without Borders site:

LV



Democracy's secret   In free, general elections, with secret ballots

There, too, is music's concealment, its inaccessibility, eye

to eye   Where coercive power, over the other, does not

exist   This is music's secret   When music moves,

sovereign, in time, its own time   For that is what defines it



South African faces, in the first free election   The dignity,

the joy breaking through, the laughter, the tears   And the wave

of warmth   As if the terrorist bombs, the violence, did not even exist

Amandla!  The strength to do what?  The power to do what?  We shall see —



There's the fear that disappointment will come  Also inside

myself   But that is not I   Objective music sounds

for a moment   That which is history   If that summary word has

    any meaning whatsoever

I have been here before   When in the city park in Lund

I took off my hat on the first of May, when we sang

the Internationale, at a Social-Democratic gathering, in the early

60s   A warm rain fell on my head   New, light-green leaves

That I, too, grasped democracy's secret   The unification of

fellowship and sovereignty   Respect for the worth of every

human being   Later another kind of transparency came, the blinding



Every moment democracy must be won anew   As if

it were always indefensible, defensively   As if it just

existed as light actively moving outward   For a short time it can eliminate

violence   But violence can grow overpowering   As can the violence of others against others

This is no excuse   Worth itself is always obliterated by murder