Lying on his back under tall trees he is also up there. He rills into thousands of twigs and branches, is swayed back and forth, as if in a catapult seat outflung in slow motion. Standing down by the jetties he squints across the waters. The docks age sooner than men. Made of splintered silver grey planks, and with stones in their bellies. The blinding light rips its way straight through. Sailing all day in an open boat over the glittering bights, he will fall asleep at last inside a blue lamp while islands like great nocturnal moths creep over the glass.
Tomas Tranströmer’s poetry has been translated into fifty languages. His most recent collection is Den stora gåtan (The Big Riddle). Robin Fulton’s English translation of Tranströmer’s entire body of work, The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems, was published in 2006.