Throughout those dismal months my life was only sparked alight when I made love to you. As the firefly ignites and fades, ignites and fades, we follow the flashes of its flight in the dark among the olive trees. Throughout those dismal months, my soul sat slumped and lifeless but my body walked to yours.… Continue reading Tomas Tranströmer
The mailbox shines calmly, what is written cannot be taken back. A mild chilly wind blows through my shirt and gropes around for my heart. — Tomas Tranströmer, from “Late May,” Bright Scythe: Selected Poems by Tomas Tranströmer (Sarabande Books, 2015)
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. — Tomas Tranströmer, “Midwinter,” Poetry International 2012. Translation: 2002, Robin Fulton.
Whoever doesn’t live in poetry cannot survive here on earth. ― Halldór Laxness, Under the Glacier. (Vintage, March 8, 2005) Originally published 1968.
Solitary Swedish Houses A mix-max of black spruce and smoking moonbeams. Here’s the croft lying low and not a sign of life. Till the morning dew murmurs and an old man opens – with a shaky hand – his window and lets out an owl. Further off, the new building stands steaming with the laundry… Continue reading Tomas Tranströmer
I looked at the sky and at the earth and straight ahead and since then I’ve been writing a long letter to the dead on a typewriter with no ribbon just a horizon line so the words knock in vain and nothing sticks. — Tomas Tranströmer, from “Baltics,” The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems, translated… Continue reading Tomas Tranströmer
She awakens first at the touch of love; before that time she is a dream, yet in her dream life we can distinguish two stages: in the first, love dreams about her; in the second, she dreams about love. — Søren Kierkegaard, The Seducer’s Diary. (Princeton University Press August 18, 1997) Originally published 1843.
