Tanker i Ligurien [English translation]

If one lives in a duck pond,

and is completely satisfied.

one soon believes the pool is an ocean.

Then the water lily is a virgin forest,

and man himself is humanity,

and for every question one has an answer.

And everything beyond the horizon,

feels scary and wrong,

like an unnatural, incomprehensible game.

Then you close your eyes and ferment

of complacency,

And stupidity soon becomes a religion.

Then one sits in Stockholm,

in Lund and Göteborg,

three fly shits on the edge of the world,

and judge and reject,

in restaurants and in kitchens,

and determine what has and has no value.

When one knows more about China,

Peru and the United States

than those losers know who live there every day.

One doesn't need to ask

themselves how it is,

and one needs to either read or travel.

It is if one in Cairo

desires meatballs with onion

which taste like mom has made them.

Or like at a cafe

in Paris, order herring

and if they hesitate, point your forehead at them.

Like holding soccer in font of

a lousy pyramid,

and a schottische before Beethoven's mystique.

Then you become someone like a German

in northern Italy,

and then you get all the love you deserve.

"Yes, love is beautiful

it is people who are ugly."

like Wennerberg says when he is speaking.

Should one blame the system

or perhaps one's self?

Who decides what one thinks one should do?

But that which only closes one's eyes

is not really blind

even if it was the devil so comfortabe.

And if the welfare state

gives a constant quandary

you may perhaps go and look at yourself in the mirror.

From my cliff in Liguria

I see farmers who go

and turn their scythes down in the valley.

They work with their bodies

under The Sun's white ball,

for the old ones, the women and children.

In my cottage I am everything

out in the world nothing.

Which value do I want to give myself?

Will I ever understand

the earth we come from

may I see a crumb of humility!

• Artist:Björn Afzelius
• Album:Globetrotter (1980)