My first thought (recollection, really) was that in Hälsingland, where I spent late childhood and my early teens, I once heard an old woman say that she had seen "en karl och en människa på vägen."

Your Swedish is a lot better than mine, I think. I left Sweden in 1969, and have not lived there since, and so may have lost a lot of its resonance. English has been my main/only language for going in 55 years now; I'm still learning it.

Reading someone who really knows English at depth, say Nadeem Aslam, is a journey at amazing depth; I don't think I'll ever achieve that as a writer.

I believe that being born into a language as your mother tongue, for reasons more mysterious than scientific, instils it as a far grater depth than a language learned later in life; I am still pondering how come.

I agree, poetry would be the savior 🐺