Tomas Tranströmer: "Romanesque Arches"

in tribute

Tomas Tranströmer

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.



"Romanesque Arches" by Tomas Tranströmer, from New Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2011 edition). Translated from the original Swedish by Robin Fulton.

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).

Tomas Tranströmer: "Allegro"

After a black day, I play Haydn,

and feel a little warmth in my hands.

The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.

The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.

The sound says that freedom exists

and someone pays no tax to Caesar.

I shove my hands in my haydnpockets

and act like a man who is calm about it all.

I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:

"We do not surrender. But want peace."

The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;

rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.

The rocks roll straight through the house

but every pane of glass is still whole.

"Allegro" by Tomas Tranströmer, from The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations, edited by Robert Bly. Translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly. © Harper Perennial, 2005.  

Photography credit: "Close Up of Male Hands Playing the Piano," by Diego Cervo (originally color).