The Dialouge

By Göran Sonnevi, translation Rika Lesser

The Feldenkrais Method approaches our thought through the kinesthetic sense mostly in a non-verbal way.
Still communication between us is also to some extent through language.

Language is always open, the Swedish poet Göran Sonnevi teaches in poem after poem, talk after talk.

He wrote a poem in 1983 that includes everything I ever want to accomplish in my teaching and communication. With a generous permission from author and publisher, I publish it in the context of this website and this learning of humanity.


Whose life? you asked
And I answered
my life, and yours
There are no other lives
But aren't all people
different?
There's nothing
but difference
It makes no difference!
People live in different conditions:
internal, external
I can hold no one
in contempt, for then
you have the instrument
What about those
who don't want to change their conditions,
those who believe
change
is impossible?
It makes no difference
There's nothing but
you, and you
Only when you become explicit,
when you
question me, and I
answer, when there's
an exchange Only then is there language
only then are we human
And this doesn't happen
very often?
No, most everything
remains difference, without seeing
the difference
Will we talk again some time?
Yes

Do you believe change is possible?
Yes, that too

© Göran Sonnevi 1983
from the book A Child Is Not a Knife, selected poems of Göran Sonnevi
Translated and edited by Rika Lesser
© Rika Lesser English translation
Published by Princeton University Press 1993
ISBN 0-691-01543-0