During the heavy months my life caught fire only when
I made love with you.
The firefly too lights up and goes out, lights up and goes out
—by quick glimpses we follow its route
among the olive trees in the darkness of night.
During the heavy months the soul sat
indolent and crushed,
but the body took the nearest way to you.
The night heavens gave off moos.
We stole milk from the cosmos and survived.
translated by Robert Bly (Minneapolis, MN, Graywolf Press, 2001) p.82
(via crashinglybeautiful)
Despondency breaks off its course.
Anguish breaks off its course.
The vulture breaks off its flight.
The eager light streams out,
even the ghosts take a draught.
And our paintings see daylight,
our red beasts of the ice-age studios.
Everything begins to look around.
We walk in the sun in hundreds.
Each man is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.
The endless ground under us.
The water is shining among the trees.
The lake is a window into the earth.
(via crashinglybeautiful)
translated by Robert Bly
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.
(Source: poets.org)
translated by Robert Bly in Selected Poems, ed. Robert Hass
I
Sun glints from the frozen river.
This is the world’s roof.
Silence.
I sit on an overturned boat, pulled up on shore,
swallow the silence-potion,
I am slowly turning.
II
A wheel stretches out endlessly, is turning.
The hub is here, is nearly
motionless.
Some motion farther out: tracks in the snow,
words that begin to slide
past building fronts.
The hum of traffic from the highway
and the traffic without sound
of the dead as they return.
Farther out: tragic masks bracing the wind,
the road of accelerations—still farther
the rushing
where the last words of love evaporate—
water drops that creep slowly
down steel wings …
profiles shouting—the empty earphones
clashing against each other—
kamikaze!
III
The frozen river gleams and is silent.
Shadows here are deep
and without voice.
My steps here were explosions in the field
that are now being painted by the silence
painted by silence.
(via crashinglybeautiful) (via silencesounds)
There is a line from a Tomas Transtromer poem that doesn’t leave my head:
“We are at a party that doesn’t love us.”
I am haunted by the truth of this.
