Two Poems from Tomas Tranströmer
Further In
On the main road into the city
when the sun is low.
The traffic thickens, crawls.
It is a sluggish dragon glittering.
I am one of the dragon’s scales.
Suddenly the red sun is
right in the middle of the windscreen
streaming in.
I am transparent
and writing becomes visible
inside me
words in invisible ink
which appear
when the paper is held to the fire!
I know I must get far away
straight through the city and then
further until it is time to go out
and walk far in the forest.
Walk in the footprints of the badger.
It gets dark, difficult to see.
In there on the moss lie stones.
One of the stones is precious.
It can change everything
it can make the darkness shine.
It is a switch for the whole country.
Everything depends on it.
Look at it, touch it…
The Tree and the Sky
There’s a tree walking around in the rain,
it rushes past us in the pouring grey.
It has an errand. It gathers life
out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.
When the rain stops so does the tree.
There it is, quiet on clear nights
waiting as we do for the moment
when the snowflakes blossom in space.
Copyright © Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Fulton
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I am an American living in Sweden with my wife and young sons. A Swedish academic dad I’ve befriended pointed me toward Tranströmer’s poetry to learn Swedish. I have not heard of him and yet we live across the water from the island Runmarö where he spent many of his early days. I was looking for poetry samples and came across your site. Good stuff.
jb says: How’s it looking, these days, John, the Stockholm archipelago. One of my favourite places in the whole world.