К. Б. Блумдаль (Blomdahl)
Текст песни Aniara. Akt 1. sc 3 (1)

Scene 3
Interlude.

Chief Technician I in front of curtain.

(Chief Technician 1 (Head Astronomer) compares the spaceship Aniara and its journey to "a small bubble in the glass bowl of God's spirit".)

CHIEF TECHNICIAN 1:
We are slowly beginning to divine that the space
in which we journey forth is of another kind than what we imagined each time the word space
on the Earth was imbued with our fantasy. We perceive now that that we call space and glass clarity round Aniara's hull is spirit, eternal spirit, intangible, that we have lost ourselves in the sea of spirit. Oh, if we could but return to our base, 0 now when we know what our ship is in space:
a small bubble in the glass bowl of God's spirit.
I shall relate what I have heard about glass
and then you will understand. In all glass
that stands untouched sufficiently long,
a bubble therein moves little by little
interminably slowly towards another point
in the glass body, and after a thousand years
the bubble has made a journey in its glass.
In the same way as in infinite space
where the abysmal reaches of the light-years' vault
engulf the bubble Aniara in her tiny assault.
For, though the speed she is travelling is great
and much greater than a fast planet,
her velocity measured by the scale of space
corresponds exactly to what we know
about the bubble in this bowl of glass.
Oh, if we could but return to our base,
now when we know what our ship is in space:
a small bubble in the glass bowl of God's spirit.