Hi IT,
I'd like to say Transtromer is my favorite Swedish poet, but that would be disingenuous to say the least since he is the only Swedish poet I know. But I do like his poetry.
In this poem, I love his metaphors --
They switch off the light and its white shade
glimmers for a moment before dissolving
like a tablet in a glass of darkness.
their most secret thoughts meet as when
two colours meet and flow into each other
on the wet paper of a schoolboy's painting.
The houses have approached.
They stand close up in a throng, waiting,
a crowd whose faces have no expressions.
As Bratche asks, is the couple indulging an illicit romance in the hotel? If the houses that have moved "close up in a throng" are "a crowd whose faces have no expressions," what do they think of the couple -- are they protecting them, condemning them, just waiting to see what becomes of their relationship? The poem's surrealistic ending just quivers with possibilities.
FACE TO FACE by Tomas Transtromer
In February life stood still.
The birds refused to fly and the soul
grated against the landscape as a boat
chafes against the jetty where it’s moored.
The trees were turned away. The snow’s depth
measured by the stubble poking through.
The footprints grew old out on the ice-crust.
Under tarpaulin, language was being broken down.
Suddenly, something approaches the window.
I stop working and look up.
The colours blaze. Everything turns around.
The earth and I spring at each other.
Translated from the Swedish by Robin Robertson
Prose poem: ANSWERS TO LETTERS by Tomas Transtromer
In the bottom drawer of my desk I found a letter that first arrived twenty-six years ago. A letter in panic, and it's still breathing when it arrives the second time.
A house has five windows: through four of them the day shines clear and still. The fifth faces a black sky, thunder and storm. I stand at the fifth window. The letter.
Sometimes an abyss opens between Tuesday and Wednesday but twenty-six years could pass in a moment. Time is not a straight line, it's more of a labyrinth, and if you press close to the wall at the right place you can hear the hurrying steps and the voices, you can hear yourself walking past on the other's side.
Was the letter ever answered? I don't remember, it was long ago. The countless thresholds of the sea kept migrating. The heart kept leaping from second to second like a toad in the wet grass of an Autumn night.
The unanswered letters pile up, like cirrostratus clouds promising bad weather. They make the sunbeams lusterless. One day I will answer. One day when I am dead and can at last concentrate. Or at least so far away from here that I can find myself again. When I'm walking, newly arrived, in the big city, on 125th Street, in the wind on the street of dancing garbage. I who love to stray off and vanish in the crowd, a capital T in the endless mass of text.
Translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton
AFTER A DEATH by Tomas Transtromer
Once there was a shock
that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.
One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
through brush where a few leaves hang on.
They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
Names swallowed by the cold.
It is still beautiful to feel the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.
Translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly
KYRIE by Tomas Tranströmer
At times my life suddenly opens its eyes in the dark.
A feeling of masses of people pushing blindly
through the streets, excitedly, toward some miracle,
while I remain here and no one sees me.
It is like the child who falls asleep in terror
listening to the heavy thumps of his heart.
For a long, long time till morning puts his light in the locks
and the doors of darkness open.
Translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly
A WINTER NIGHT by Tomas Transtromer
The storm puts its mouth to the house
and blows to produce a note.
I sleep uneasily, turn, with shut eyes
read the storm's text.
But the child's eyes are large in the dark
and for the child the storm howls.
Both are fond of lamps that swing.
Both are halfway towards speech.
The storm has childish hands and wings.
The Caravan bolts towards Lapland.
And the house feels its own constellation of nails
holding the walls together.
The night is calm over our floor
(where all expired footsteps
rest like sunk leaves in a pond)
but outside the night is wild.
Over the world goes a graver storm.
It sets its mouth to our soul
and blows to produce a note. We dread
that the storm will blow us empty.
Translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton
