Tomas Tranströmer
Tomas Tranströmer Poems
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.
...
It’s spring in 1827, Beethoven
hoists his death-mask and sails off.
The grindstones are turning in Europe’s windmills.
...
They switch off the light and its white shade
glimmers for a moment before dissolving
like a tablet in a glass of darkness. Then up.
...
Men in overalls the same color as earth rise from a ditch.
It's a transitional place, in stalemate, neither country nor city.
Construction cranes on the horizon want to take the big leap,
but the clocks are against it.
...
The Under Secretary leans forward and draws an X
and her ear-drops dangle like swords of Damocles.
...
The almighty cyclop’s-eye clouded over
and the grass shook itself in the coal dust.
Beaten black and blue by the night’s dreams
...
Despondency breaks off its course.
Anguish breaks off its course.
The vulture breaks off its flight.
...
It is night with glaring sunshine. I stand in the woods and look towards my house with its misty blue walls. As though I were recently dead and saw the house from a new angle.
...
A blue sheen
radiates from my clothes.
Midwinter.
Jangling tambourines of ice.
I close my eyes.
There is a soundless world
there is a crack
where dead people
are smuggled across the border.
...
Vi steg in. En enda väldig sal,
tyst och tom, där golvets yta låg
som en övergiven skridskois.
Alla dörrar stängda. Luften grå.
Målningar på väggarna. Man såg
bilder livlöst myllra: sköldar, våg-
skålar, fiskar, kämpande gestalter
i en dövstum värld på andra sidan.
En skulptur var utställd i det tomma:
ensam mitt i salen stod en häst,
men vi märkte honom inte först
när vi fångades av allt det tomma.
Svagare än suset i en snäcka
hördes ljud och röster ifrån staden
kretsande i detta öde rum,
sorlande och sökande en makt.
Också något annat. Något mörkt
ställde sig vid våra sinnens fem
trösklar utan att gå över dem.
Sanden rann i alla tysta glas.
Det var dags att röra sig. Vi gick
bort mot hästen. Den var jättelik,
svart som järn. En bild av makten själv
som blev kvar när furstarna gått bort.
Hästen talade: ‘Jag är den Ende.
Tomheten som red mig har jag kastat.
Detta är mitt stall. Jag växer sakta.
Och jag äter tystnaden härinne.'
...
We stepped in. A single vast hall,
silent and empty, where the surface of the floor lay
like an abandoned skating rink.
All doors shut. The air grey.
Paintings on the walls. We saw
pictures throng lifelessly: shields, scale-
pans, fishes, struggling figures
in a deaf and dumb world on the other side.
A sculpture was set out in the void:
in the middle of the hall alone a horse stood
but at first when we were absorbed
by all the emptiness we did not notice him.
Fainter than the breathing in a shell
sounds and voices from the town
circling in this desolate space
murmuring and seeking power.
Also something else. Something darkly
set itself at our senses' five
thresholds without stepping over them.
Sand ran in every silent glass.
It was time to move. We walked
over to the horse. It was gigantic,
dark as iron. An image of power itself
abandoned when the princes left.
The horse spoke: ‘I am The Only One.
The emptiness that rode me I have thrown.
This is my stable. I am growing quietly.
And I eat the silence that's in here.'
...
Jag landsteg en majnatt
i ett kyligt månsken
där gräs och blommor var grå
men doften grön.
Jag gled uppför sluttningen
i den färgblinda natten
medan vita stenar
signalerade till månen.
En tidrymd
några minuter lång
femtioåtta år bred.
Och bakom mig
bortom de blyskimrande vattnen
fanns den andra kusten
och de som härskade.
Människor med framtid
i stället för ansikten.
...
I stepped ashore one May night
in the cool moonshine
where grass and flowers were grey
but the scent green.
I glided up the slope
in the colour-blind night
while white stones
signalled to the moon.
A period of time
a few minutes long
fifty-eight years wide.
And behind me
beyond the lead-shimmering waters
was the other shore
and those who ruled.
People with a future
instead of a face.
...
This forest in May. It haunts my whole life:
the invisible moving van. Singing birds.
In silent pools, mosquito larvae's
...
The black grand piano, the gleaming spider
stood trembling in the midst of its music-net.
...
One day as she rinsed her wash from the jetty,
the bay's cold grave rose up through her arms
and into her life.
...
Rushing rushing water's rumbling old hypnosis.
The river's flooding the car-graveyard, glittering
behind the masks.
...
The stones we have thrown I hear
fall, glass-clear through the year. In the valley
confused actions of the moment
...
Tomas Tranströmer Biography
a Swedish writer, poet and translator, whose poetry has been deeply influential in Sweden, as well as around the world. He was the recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature "because, through his condensed, transluscent images, he gives us fresh access to reality". Tranströmer received his secondary education at the Södra Latin School in Stockholm and graduated as a psychologist from Stockholm University in 1956. He began writing at thirteen, and published his first collection of poems, 17 dikter (Seventeen Poems) in 1954. An English translation by Robin Fulton of his entire body of work, New Collected Poems, was published in the UK in 1987 and expanded in 1997. Following the publication of Den stora gåtan (The Great Enigma), Fulton's edition was further expanded into The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems, published in the US in 2006 and as an updated edition of New Collected Poems in the UK in 2011. He published a short autobiography, Minnena ser mig (Memories look at me), in 1993. HE was awarded the Nobel price in literature in 2011. Other poets, especially in the "political" 1970's, accused Tranströmer of being apart from his tradition and not including political issues in his poems and novels. His work, though, lies within and further develops the Modernist and Expressionist/Surrealist language of 20th century poetry; his clear, seemingly simple pictures from everyday life and nature in particular reveals a mystic insight to the universal aspects of the human mind. Tranströmer and the American poet Robert Bly are close friends and their correspondence has been published in the book Air Mail. In 1990, Tranströmer suffered a stroke that affects his speech, but he continues to write. Tranströmer has in the past been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and many consider him one of Sweden's foremost poets. Tranströmer's awards include the Bonnier Award for Poetry, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Oevralids Prize, the Petrarca-Preis in Germany, the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings and the Swedish Award from International Poetry Forum. In 2007, Tranströmer received a special Lifetime Recognition Award given by the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, which also awards the annual Griffin Poetry Prize. His poetry has been translated into fifty languages; Bly, and the prominent American blues writer Samuel Charters have translated his work into English. In addition to his work as a writer, Tranströmer was also a respected psychologist before he had his stroke. He worked in juvenile prisons, and with disabled, convicts, and drug addicts. He is also a piano player, something he has been able to continue after his stroke, albeit with one hand. Tranströmer was awarded the Nobel prize in Litterature 2011 on October 6. Swedish collections 17 dikter (1954) - Seventeen Poems Hemligheter på vägen (1958) Den halvfärdiga himlen (1962) - The Half-Finished Heaven Klanger och spår (1966) - Windows and Stones Mörkerseende (1970) - Night Vision Stigar (1973) - Paths Östersjöar (1974) - Baltics Sanningsbarriären (1978) Det vilda torget (1983) För levande och döda (1989) - For the Living and the Dead Sorgegondolen (1996) Den stora gåtan (2004) Galleriet: Reflected in Vecka nr.II (2007)- an artist book by Modhir Ahmed Selected books in English translation 20 Poems tr. Robert Bly (Seventies Press, 1970) Windows and Stones tr. May Swenson & Leif Sjoberg (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972) Baltics tr. Samuel Charters (Oyez, Berkeley, 1975) Collected Poems tr. Robin Fulton (Bloodaxe Books, 1987) Sorrow Gondola: Sorgegondolen tr. Robin Fulton (Dedalus Press, 1997) New Collected Poems tr. Robin Fulton (Bloodaxe Books, 1997) The Half-Finished Heaven tr. Robert Bly (Graywolf Press, 2001) The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems tr. Robin Fulton (New Directions, 2006) The Sorrow Gondola tr. Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl (Green Integer, 2010) New Collected Poems tr. Robin Fulton (Bloodaxe Books, 2011))
The Best Poem Of Tomas Tranströmer
After A Death
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 hear 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 by Robert Bly
Tomas Tranströmer Comments
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