Work Went On — Web Exclusive
By Eva Ström
Translated by Eva Claeson
Work went on in the hospital without patients.
The pregnant women died outside in the meadows.
The birds protected the dug up fields.
The rounds came and disappeared. The charts were now invented.
They dealt with protozoa and spiders and humans without toes,
cranes that flew through the ozone hole, got singed and died.
Nature endured. The hazel's persevering catkin. The tenacity of
the brush, the desperate resistance of the roots and the wild rose branches
covered with prickles and thorns.
The unemployed gathered on the market square between high rises.
The animals had left their barns and fled.
No politician came to the appointed place.
Newspaper pages came out, white and unreadable like sacramental wafers.
The want ads were replaced by colorful comics.
All was abolished, both subscribers and news.
No one had an answer, any longer, to questions about the TV stations.
The questioners were powerless, the answerers likewise.
The big freezers were filled with unexposed film.
Eva Ström is a Swedish lyricist, novelist, biographer, and literary critic. She made her literary debut in 1977 with the poetry collection Den brinnande zeppelinaren. Ström trained as a physician and worked in the medical profession 1974-1988 before becoming a full-time author. She was awarded the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 2003 for the poetry collection The Rib Cities.
Eva Claeson is one of the founding editors of Metamorphoses. She spent her early life in Germany, Belgium, and Cuba, and she lived in San Francisco during the 1950s. She has translated short stories, novels, and poetry from Swedish to English.