Martinsson, "The Stone Carving"

The words that rang around the sacrificial victims
have flown: we'll never hear them, can't imagine
the words for harvest weather, showers of hail:
They're dead, along with words for man and woman.
The sounds which they called their long boats —
carved here with all their naked ribs exposed —
we'll never hear: what milk was, or the sun's name,
their love songs, words for senses, or the sound
of eye, nose, mouth and ear. How did they sound?
The summer words that lived in speech through winter
and their words for snow; the word for autumn apples.
We can't quite catch their name for weighty death:
though here we see that word, we'll never hear it.

Harry Martinsson
tr. Andrew Brown