Wednesday, January 4, 2012

april and silence





Spring lies abandoned
A ditch the color of dark violet
moves alongside me
giving no images back.

The only thing that shines
are some yellow flowers.

I am carried inside
my own shadow like a violin
in its black case.

The only thing I want to say
hovers just out of reach
like the family silver
at the pawnbroker's.



~ Tomas Transtromer
translation by Robert Bly
from The Half-Finished Heaven






Bly's Commentary:

Tranströmer wrote this poem just before his stroke. Since then, he couldn't talk for 15 years. His mind is still alert. He communicates with his wife by writing. Could you sense the power of those last lines of his poem?— "hovers just out of reach / like the family silver / at the pawnbroker's." That's some image few American writers could invoke that Tranströmer does all the time.







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