Readings: A Nobel Fragment

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After explaining, in preceding stanzas, how and why “The walls are part of you”, new Nobel Laureate, Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, closes his poem “Vermeer” with this:

The airy sky has taken its place leaning against the wall.
It is like a prayer to what is empty.
And what is empty turns its face to us
And whispers:
“I am not empty, I am open.”


Very nice.
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Readings: A Poem by Tomas Tranströmer

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Below is a short poem by the 2011 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Swedish poet, Tomas Tranströmer. The translation is from the book, The Half-Finished Heaven: the Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer, by American poet, Robert Bly.



December Evening, ‘72

Here I come the invisible man, perhaps in the employ
of some huge Memory that wants to live at this moment.
xxxxAnd I drive by

the white church that’s locked up. A saint made of wood is
xxxxinside,
smiling helplessly, as if someone had taken his glasses.

He’s alone. Everything else is now, now, now. Gravity
pulling us toward work in the dark and the bed at night. The
xxxxwar.

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I chose this poem because, although it dates from forty years ago, like all great poetry it is timeless and as relevant today as it was then: “The war.”
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