[1717] Untitled

The mine-detector
Weaves its old patter
Without end.

Words without import
Are lobbed to and fro
Between us.

Forgotten intrigues
With their spider's web
Snare our hands.

Choked by its clown's mask
And quite dry, my mind
Is crumbling.

	-- Dag Hammarskjöld

	(translated by Leif Sjöberg and W. H. Auden)

I saw this referenced by Arthur Schlessinger in his Kennedy biography, A
Thousand Days.  Hammarskjöld was the UN Secretary General at the height of
the Cold War, seeing first hand the back and forth of a period where Time
itself almost came to an end.  After his tragic death trying to negotiate a
peace in The Congo, his journal of poetry and thoughts, entitled Markings,
was discovered in his home.  It was translated into English by Leif Sjöberg
and W. H. Auden.  THis poem struck me as an insight into the mind of the
negotiator, who has to put up with old intrigues and has to act as a mine
sweeper when attempting to work his way through argument and counter
argument, all the while putting on a "clown's face".

For more on this remarkable and largely forgotten man, see his biography on
the Nobel Prize website at
http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1961/hammarskjold-bio.html

Best,
Dave Fortin.





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