God is a daybed where we lie back amid all creationpure as angels, saintly eyes meeting the stars’ welcome;God’s a pillow for our heads and a stool for our feet;God’s a stockpile of strength and an untouched darkness;God’s the unseen’s pure soul, the unimagined’s rotting corpse;God’s eternity’s boundless lake;God’s a fertile seed of nothingness, a fistful of ash from broken worlds;God’s the swarming of insects and the rapture of roses;God’s the empty swing hung between everything and nothing;God’s a prison for all free spirits;God’s a harp in the most wrathful hand;God is what desire pulls down to Earth. GudGud är en vilobädd, på den vi ligga utsträckta i alltetrena som änglar, med helgonblå ögon besvarande stjärnornas hälsning;gud är en kudde mot vilken vi luta vårt huvud, gud är ett stöd för vår fot;gud är ett förråd av kraft och ett jungfruligt mörker;gud är det oseddas obefläckade själ och det outtänktas redan förruttnade kropp;gud är evigheternas stående vatten;gud är intets fruktbara frö och de nedbrunna världarnas handfull av aska;gud är insekternas myriader och rosornas extas;gud är en tom gunga mellan intet och alltet;gud är ett fängelse för alla fria själar;gud är en harpa för den starkaste vredens hand;gud är vad längtan kan förmå att stiga ned på jorden!
God
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“God” from MODERN WOMAN: by Edith Södergran.
Published by World Poetry Books on March 11, 2026.
English Copyright © 2026 by CD Eskilson.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Edith Södergran (1892–1923) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet widely credited with introducing modernism to Swedish-language poetry. Her poetry was largely ridiculed by critics, and she died at age 31 receiving little positive recognition. Today, however, she is remembered as one of the greatest modern poets in Nordic literature.
Monica Acosta
CD Eskilson is the author of Scream / Queen (Acre Books, 2025) and the translator of Modern Woman (World Poetry Books, 2026), Edith Södergran’s 1916 poetry collection. CD is poetry co-editor at Split Lip Magazine.
Södergran’s daring, avant-garde work outraged many of her Finland-Swedish contemporaries who clung to traditional literary sensibilities. Through dynamic symbolism and fluid logic, the poems comprising her first collection fundamentally questioned early twentieth-century notions of what poetry is and what it can do.
“Like Ungaretti’s Il porto sepolto, published the same year, Södergran’s Dikter announced a radically new ‘outsider’ lyric—formally groundbreaking, unflinchingly subjective, and destined to alter the course of European poetry. With Modern Woman, poet and translator CD Eskilson brings that audacious debut into exquisitely tuned English, and their translator’s introduction offers an insightful guide to her multilingual, avant-garde influences and the enduring force of her poetic ‘leap to freedom.’”
—Geoffrey Brock
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