Truls Ljungström’s Reviews > The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert > Status Update

Truls Ljungström
is 23% done
Beautiful as on a jug a painted flower
is the land that bore you, gave you life,
beautiful as on a jug a painted flower,
sweeter than a loaf from fresh-ground flour
into which you’ve deeply sunk your knife.
Countless times disheartened, disappointed,
always newly you return to it,
countless times disheartened, disappointed,
to this land so rich and sun-anointed,
poor like springtime in a gravel pit.
— Sep 09, 2025 09:33AM
is the land that bore you, gave you life,
beautiful as on a jug a painted flower,
sweeter than a loaf from fresh-ground flour
into which you’ve deeply sunk your knife.
Countless times disheartened, disappointed,
always newly you return to it,
countless times disheartened, disappointed,
to this land so rich and sun-anointed,
poor like springtime in a gravel pit.
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Truls’s Previous Updates

Truls Ljungström
is 44% done
Remembrances, however, have a woman’s skin.
When you taste them with the tip of your tongue
they taste sweet
and have an exciting fragrance.
So there!
— Sep 09, 2025 09:39AM
When you taste them with the tip of your tongue
they taste sweet
and have an exciting fragrance.
So there!

Truls Ljungström
is 44% done
Remembrances, however, have a woman’s skin.
When you taste them with the tip of your tongue
they taste sweet
and have an exciting fragrance.
So there!
— Sep 09, 2025 09:39AM
When you taste them with the tip of your tongue
they taste sweet
and have an exciting fragrance.
So there!

Truls Ljungström
is 23% done
Beautiful as on a jug a painted flower,
heavy as our guilt that will not go away
— never can its memory decay.
At the end, at our final hour
we shall slumber in its bitter clay.
— Sep 09, 2025 09:33AM
heavy as our guilt that will not go away
— never can its memory decay.
At the end, at our final hour
we shall slumber in its bitter clay.

Truls Ljungström
is 19% done
A scent-filled autumn sky: below it
a city with an ailing poet,
a window to the evening sun.
Here is a helmet, sword and gun.
This city, true, is not where I was born,
its rivers flow along without concern,
but once below a bridge there I had wept:
a pipe, a pen, a ring are all I kept.
— Sep 09, 2025 08:08AM
a city with an ailing poet,
a window to the evening sun.
Here is a helmet, sword and gun.
This city, true, is not where I was born,
its rivers flow along without concern,
but once below a bridge there I had wept:
a pipe, a pen, a ring are all I kept.

Truls Ljungström
is 19% done
It was autumn. Foreign troops
had occupied the vineyard slopes,
emplaced their guns among the vines, like nests,
and aimed them at the Gioconda’s breasts.
We saw a sad impoverished land,
soldiers without legs or hands
but not without a spark of hope,
the fortress gates were swinging open.
— Sep 09, 2025 08:08AM
had occupied the vineyard slopes,
emplaced their guns among the vines, like nests,
and aimed them at the Gioconda’s breasts.
We saw a sad impoverished land,
soldiers without legs or hands
but not without a spark of hope,
the fortress gates were swinging open.

Truls Ljungström
is 17% done
Deep-red apples curve down the royal trunk like a harp, fitted by autumn with cobweb strings, ring and sing, my player!
We are not from a land where oranges grow, where round Ionian columns climb the vine that’s sweeter than the lips of Roman women; ours but the apple tree, fiercely bowed down by age and fruit.
— Sep 09, 2025 07:09AM
We are not from a land where oranges grow, where round Ionian columns climb the vine that’s sweeter than the lips of Roman women; ours but the apple tree, fiercely bowed down by age and fruit.