A clear march day, on the flight to Gothenburg, sweden,
I look straight down at the summer places.
Rökneöarna as two whales in dialogue
swimming in the open water, waiting for spring.
lake Vättern ice-free as it has been all winters
in recent years, with warmer climate.
the E20 is a straight cut through the forest,
a long, narrow västgötskt scars that itch
where the landscape wants to shoot up a mountain
or a remnant of felplanering,
a closed society, an oblique roundabout
or a dream of energy supply
which retrieves power from the elements without the risk.
Europavägen prisoners not in Karlsborg,
nedrustad, nålad bull’s-eye,
in the centralas minimal point.
the Fortress was, as the Swedish armed forces, often,
too expensive, too big, too late, realized,
in addition, samplanerad with the channel,
on the contrary, too small to meet current requirements.
Centralförsvarets the idea was weird,
the enemy would be lured into the the country, and to perish
with a surprise attack from various directions.
Then Jönköping and Askersund rejected
suitable for fästningsbygget
the choice fell on the town of Karlsborg. Baltzar von Platen
connected the same this with the channel.
the Transports would thus be secured
and skärgårdsbåtarna establish strategic cooperation
via the canal with the town of Karlsborg, was the idea.
But the fortress was never completed.
When the work was discontinued in 1908
had the channel already has more than seventy years old.
Now, the grass grow wild on the high walls
outside the slutvärnet, Europe’s longest home,
the spring sun shines on a fuzzy brown outline,
as taken from an alphabet, from the military cipher,
the encrypted program as well as the abandonment,
a sign sent to me in flygplansfönstret.
Suddenly, the idea of centralförsvaret crystal clear,
decoded, the well thought out and reasonable.
the Defense must be in the interior, it is yourself
you should defend yourself against, the destructive part
that building walls against an environment, want to preserve
oskäligheterna in the world’s order.
The external borders defense is insufficient,
and the high walls solve nothing in the long term,
we learn from history if we examine the matter.
To human life in the long run is going to build
at the exclusion of others, privileges,
more and more unreasonable and anachronistic,
is a doctrine that must be resisted.
So it may be with the Karlsborg fortress:
the temple is open for everyone
to consider it centralförsvar
which means to see yourself a little clearer.
On the ramparts with grass, this can be done,
they are suitable for overview and insight,
out onto the large lake that glitters,
set against a forest to wander inwards.
Jonas Brave is a poet and former publisher of, inter alia, Wahlström & Widstrand. In 2014 he was awarded the Samfundet De Nios a special prize, and in 2015 the Swedish Academy Kallebergersstipendium. His latest poetry collection is ”Between the islands in the straits” (2017).
