Tomas Tranströmer - Sorrow Gondola

April and Silence

Spring lies forsaken.
The velvet-dark ditch
crawls by my side
without reflections.

The only thing that shines
are yellow flowers.

I am cradled in my shadow
like a fiddle
in its black case.

The only thing I want to say
glimmers out of reach
like the silver
at the pawnbrokers.

Insecuritys Kingdom

The Under Secretary leans forward and draws an X
and her earrings dangle like Damoclessword.

As a spotted butterfly turns invisible in a field
so the demon blends in with the spread-open newspaper.

A helmet worn by no one has taken power.
The mother turtle flees, flying under water.

Nightbook Page

I stepped ashore one May night
into a chilly moonlight
where grass and flowers were gray
but their scent green.

I drifted up a slope
in the colorblind dark
while white stones
signaled back to the moon.

A time span
several minutes long
fifty-eight years wide.

And behind me
beyond the lead-shimmering waters
was the other coast
and those in command.

People with a future
instead of faces.

Sorrow Gondola No. 2

I Two old men, father- and son-in-law, Liszt and Wagner, are staying by the Grand Canal
together with the restless woman who is married to King Midas,
he who changes everything he touches to Wagner.
The oceans green cold pushes up through the palazzo floors.
Wagner is marked, his famous Punchinello profile looks more tired than before,
his face a white flag.
The gondola is heavy-laden with their lives, two round trips and a one-way.

II A window in the palazzo flies open and everyone grimaces in the sudden draft.
Outside on the water the trash gondola appears, paddled by two one-oared bandits.
Liszt has written down some chords so heavy, they ought to be sent off
to the mineralogical institute in Padua for analysis.
Meteorites!
Too heavy to rest, they can only sink and sink straight through the future all the way down
to the Brownshirt years.
The gondola is heavy-laden with the futures huddled-up stones.

III Peep-holes into 1990.
March 25th. Angst for Lithuania.
Dreamt I visited a large hospital.
No personnel. Everyone was a patient.

In the same dream a newborn girl
who spoke in complete sentences.

IV Beside the son-in-law, whos a man of the times, Liszt is a moth-eaten grand seigneur.
Its a disguise.
The deep, that tries on and rejects different masks, has chosen this one just for him
the deep that wants to enter people without ever showing its face.

V Abb Liszt is used to carrying his suitcase himself through sleet and sunshine
and when his time comes to die, there will be no one to meet him at the station.
A mild breeze of gifted cognac carries him away in the midst of a commission.
He always has commissions.
Two thousand letters a year!
The schoolboy who writes his misspelled word a hundred times before hes allowed to go home.
The gondola is heavy-laden with life, it is simple and black.

VI Back to 1990.
Dreamt I drove over a hundred miles in vain.
Then everything magnified. Sparrows as big as hens
sang so loud that it briefly struck me deaf.

Dreamt I had drawn piano keys
on my kitchen table. I played on them, mute
The neighbors came over to listen.

VII The clavier, which kept silent through all of Parsifal (but listened), finally has something to say.
Sighs. . sospiri. .
When Liszt plays tonight he holds the sea-pedal pressed down
so the oceans green force rises up through the floor and flows together with all the stone in the
building.
Good evening, beautiful deep!
The gondola is heavy-laden with life, it is simple and black.

VIII Dreamt I was supposed to start school but arrived too late.
Everyone in the room was wearing a white mask.
Whoever the teacher was, no one could say.

Landscape with Suns

The sun glides out from behind the house
positions itself mid-street
and breathes on us
with its scarlet wind.
Innsbruck I must leave you.
But tomorrow
a glowing sun stands
in the half-dead gray forest
where we have to work and live.

November in the Former GDR

The almighty Cyclops-eye went behind the clouds
and the grass shuddered in the coal dust.

Beaten sore and stiff from last nights dreams
we climb aboard the train
that stops at every station
and lays eggs.

Its rather quiet.
The clonging from the churchbells buckets
collecting water.
And someones unrelenting cough
telling off everything and everyone.

A stone idol is moving its lips:
its the city.
Where iron-hard misunderstandings rule
among kiosk-attendants butchers
sheet-metal workers naval officers
iron-hard misunderstandings, academics.

How my eyes ache!
Theyve been reading by the glowworm-lamps faint light.

November offers caramels of granite.
Unpredictable!
Like world history
laughing at the wrong place.

But we hear the clonging
from the churchbells buckets when they collect water
every Wednesday
is it Wednesday?
thats whats become of our Sundays!

From July 90

It was a funeral
and I sensed the dead man
was reading my thoughts
better than I could.

The organ kept quiet, birds sang.
The hole out in the blazing sun.
My friends voice lingered
in the minutes farthest side.

I drove home seen through
by the summer days brilliance
by rain and stillness
seen through by the moon.

The Cuckoo

Three Stanzas

I The knight and his lady
were petrified but happy
on a flying coffin lid
outside of time.

II Jesus held up a coin
with Tiberius in profile
a profile without love
the power in circulation.

III A dripping sword
obliterates memories.
The ground is rusting
trumpets and sheaths.

Like Being a Child

Like being a child and an enormous insult
is pulled over your head like a sack;
through the sacks stitches you catch a glimpse of the sun
and hear the cherry trees humming.

But this doesnt help, the great affront
covers your head and torso and knees