April is National Poetry Month! Edith Sodergran: "The Bride"

Translation by Lennart Bruce. Edith Sodergran, "The Bride" (Bruden).


My quarters are cramped and the ring of my thoughts
circle my finger.
There's something warm at the bottom of all the strangeness
around me,

like the faint fragrance in the water lily's cup.
Thousands of apples hang in my father's garden,
round and complete in themselves--
my diffuse life has become so too
been given shape, roundness; swelling and smooth and--simple.
My quarters are cramped and the ring of my thoughts
circle my finger.