I said to you,
I am not human
And you
looked at me
and said, no
perhaps you
are not

Then I began to vanish
dissolving from within
until not even
my shell remained
Not even
my skin, the human
shell
And you
touched me
as if I
did not exist

And inside,
inside me
was
night streaming, streaming night
whirling
and starless Not
a single
human star

When I touched you
with my fingers of night
you, too, dissolved
you were
water
between my fingers

[From A Child Is Not a Knife: Selected Poems of Göran Sonnevi, Princeton University Press, 1993, translated and edited by Rika Lesser. Original Swedish in Dikter utan ordning (Poems with no order), 1983.]

Lees de introductie van Rika Lesser op Poem and Poetics.