Tomas Tranströmer - Sorrow Gondola

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 pawnbroker’s.

The Under Secretary leans forward and draws an X
and her earrings dangle like Damocles’sword.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

It’s rather quiet.
The clonging from the churchbells’ buckets
collecting water.
And someone’s unrelenting cough
telling off everything and everyone.

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

How my eyes ache!
They’ve 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?—
that’s what’s become of our Sundays!

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 friend’s voice lingered
in the minutes’ farthest side.

I drove home seen through
by the summer day’s brilliance
by rain and stillness
seen through by the moon.