Tomas Transtromer
Tomas Transtromer was born in Stockholm (1931) and published his first book of poems in his early twenties — nothing has slowed his poetry down since, not even a crushing stroke in 1990 which bothers his speech, but not his writing, or piano playing, alebit one handed. Long a practicing psychologist (since the early 60s), before the stroke he worked in juvenile prisons, with drug addicts and the disabled. I've chosen the poems below from The Sorrow Gondola, the first collection of poetry the poet completed after 1990.
April and Silence
Spring lies deserted.
The velvet-dark ditch
crawls by my side
without reflections.
All that shines
are yellow flowers.
I'm carried in my shadow
like a violin
in its black case.
The only thing I want to say
gleans out of reach
like the silver
in a pawnshop.
A Page from the Nightbook
One night in May I stepped ashore
through a cool moonlight
where the grass and flowers were gray
but smelled green.
I drifted the slope
in the colorblind night
while white stones
signaled to the moon.
In a period
a few minutes long
and fifty-eight years wide.
And behind me
beyond the lead-shimmering water
lay the other shore
and those who ruled.
People with a future
instead of faces.
Night Journey
There's a swarming beneath us. The trains are running.
Hotel Astoria shivers
a glass of water near the bed
shines in the tunnels.
He dreamt he was a prisoner in Svallard.
The planet rotated and rumbled.
Glittering eyes walked over the fields of ice.
The beauty of miracles existed.
Silence
Walk by, they are buried. . .
A cloud floats over the sun's disc.
Starvation is a tall building
moving in the night
in the bedroom an elevator's dark shaft
opens toward the interior.
Flowers in the ditch. Fanfare and silence.
Walk by, they are buried. . .
The silverware survives in large schools
at the depths where the Atlantic is black.
Midwinter
Ablue light
radiates from my clothing.
Midwinter.
Clattering tambourines of ice.
I close my eyes.
There is a silent world
there is a crack
where the dead
are smuggled across the border.
Tomas Transtromer
The Sorrow Gondola (Green Integer)
translated by Michael McGriff & Mikaela Grassl
Spring lies deserted.
The velvet-dark ditch
crawls by my side
without reflections.
All that shines
are yellow flowers.
I'm carried in my shadow
like a violin
in its black case.
The only thing I want to say
gleans out of reach
like the silver
in a pawnshop.
A Page from the Nightbook
One night in May I stepped ashore
through a cool moonlight
where the grass and flowers were gray
but smelled green.
I drifted the slope
in the colorblind night
while white stones
signaled to the moon.
In a period
a few minutes long
and fifty-eight years wide.
And behind me
beyond the lead-shimmering water
lay the other shore
and those who ruled.
People with a future
instead of faces.
Night Journey
There's a swarming beneath us. The trains are running.
Hotel Astoria shivers
a glass of water near the bed
shines in the tunnels.
He dreamt he was a prisoner in Svallard.
The planet rotated and rumbled.
Glittering eyes walked over the fields of ice.
The beauty of miracles existed.
Silence
Walk by, they are buried. . .
A cloud floats over the sun's disc.
Starvation is a tall building
moving in the night
in the bedroom an elevator's dark shaft
opens toward the interior.
Flowers in the ditch. Fanfare and silence.
Walk by, they are buried. . .
The silverware survives in large schools
at the depths where the Atlantic is black.
Midwinter
Ablue light
radiates from my clothing.
Midwinter.
Clattering tambourines of ice.
I close my eyes.
There is a silent world
there is a crack
where the dead
are smuggled across the border.
Tomas Transtromer
The Sorrow Gondola (Green Integer)
translated by Michael McGriff & Mikaela Grassl
