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Milorad Pejić
SALMON
Mighty is nature for it has endowed the salmon
with a memory for a million years to return to die
in its first water, on its native bottom. When it feels
the time has come - it has come: it leaves everything,
setting out from the distant oceans and moving like
a compass needle in the imagined direction. Come fall,
it’s already climbing up the Ångerman River, smacking
its tail on fallen birch leaves in the shallows like a wild
stallion swatting flies.
Blind is the all-seeing hand that in our time has
erected the hydropower plant so salmon, which
keep arriving as punctually as registered mail, strike
the dam, kamikaze style. Under the oil of moonlight,
they swarm the unyielding gate until the first snows
and, enervated at last, spawn there outside the walls.
Water then bathes and sweeps away the bodies as if
nothing had happened. Oblivious is nature for it has
not taken away from God’s fish of the Ångerman
the memory of home, so they keep on striking
the concrete and assailing the unknown.