Göran Sonnevi is one of Sweden's most celebrated, respected, and prolific poets. For this first book-length selection of Sonnevi to appear in English, Rika Lesser has chosen works written between 1971 and 1989--although most of the poems come from the last decade and from Sonnevi's last three books, which form part of the single oändlig [unending/infinite/interminable] poem that he continues to write from book to book. Of Lesser's introduction to the work, Richard Howard writes, "Lesser's wonderful prose texts at the outset provide not only an ingress into complex and baffling matter but one of the most determined statements of the translator's text since Walter Benjamin."From "Åby, Öland; 1982"We are here in the ultimate lives of our bodiesnegations of the ultimate negationWe are complete parts of the worldWe rise up out of infinitylike the limestone flats from the sea Like the starsWe are denials of infinityOne day we shall reach all the way there

Acknowledgments Whose life? you asked the hyacinth Dyron; 1981 Summer has turned now And I go Seeing your smile Mourning Cloak Words have no limits I said to you The twilight of spring rain You say I'm naive You, who say yes to Demon colors For S***, 1971 There is life that / will not give up You sense the light's fragrance The wound bleeding A Child Is Not a Knife Breaking up: that large feeling in the meadow by the shore Incalculable: the heart Death is no more The narrow shaft Fagerfjall, Tjorn, 1986; For Pentti Aby, Oland; 1982 what / do I find / then From the cliff at the foot of Skull Mountain New Year's 1986 The center of unheard-of, of enormous hopes Burge, Oja; 1989 Notes Swedish Contents and Bibliographical Citations