1931-2015
Inside the huge Romanesque church the tourists jostled in the half darkness.
Vault gaped behind vault, no complete view.
A few candle flames flickered.
An angel with no face embraced me
and whispered through my whole body:
"Don't be ashamed of being human, be proud!
Inside you vault opens behind vault endlessly.
You will never be complete, that's how it's meant to be."
Blind with tears
I was pushed out on the sun-seething piazza
together with Mr and Mrs Jones, Mr Tanaka, and Signora Sabatini,
and inside them all vault opened behind vault endlessly.

Curator's note: Tomas Tranströmer, one of our mindfulness poets and 2011 winner of the Nobel Prize, died on March 26, 2015, at the age of 83. Here are a couple of quotes to remember him by: "We always feel younger than we are. I carry inside myself my earlier faces, as a tree contains its rings. The sum of them is me. The mirror sees only my latest face, while I know all my previous ones." And this: "I am still the place where creation does some work on itself."
Art credit: Still image from a video in which the poet, who had suffered a stroke, plays left-hand piano to a recording of his beautiful poem "Allegro" (photograph digitally altered by curator).
No comments :
Post a Comment
Thank you for participating respectfully in this blog's community of readers.