Tomas Tranströmer

 Tomas Tranströmer,
Nobel Prize for Literature, 2011

ALONE
—Tomas Tranströmer

I
 

One evening in February I came near to dying here.

The care skidded sideways on the ice, out

on the wrong side of the road. The approaching cars—

their lights—closed in.

My name, my girls, my job

broke free and were left silently behind

further and further away. I was anonymous

like a boy in a playground surrounded by enemies.

The approaching traffic had huge lights.

They shone on me while I pulled at the wheel

in a transparent terror that floated like egg white.

The seconds grew—there was space in them—

they grew big as hospital buildings.

You could almost pause

and breathe out for a while

before being crushed.

Then something caught: a helping grain of sand

or a wonderful gust of wind. The car broke free

and scuttled smartly right over the road.

A post shot up and cracked—a sharp clang—it

flew away in the darkness.

Then—stillness. I sat back in my seat-belt

and saw someone coming through the whirling snow

to see what had become of me.

II

I have been walking for a long time

on the frozen Östergötland fields.
I have not seen a single person.

In other parts of the world
there are people who are born, live and die
in a perpetual crowd.

To be always visible—to live
in a swarm of eyes—
a special expression must develop.
Face coated with clay.

The murmuring rises and falls
while they divide up among themselves
the sky, the shadows, the sand grains.

I must be alone
ten minutes in the morning
and ten minutes in the evening.
—Without a programme.

Everyone is queuing at everyone's door.

Many.

One.

____________________

—Medusa, returned from the sea

For more about Tomas Tranströmer and his Nobel prize, go to:

•••www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/arts/swedish-poet-wins-nobel-prize-for-literature.html
•••www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1112
•••blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/10/06/tomas-transtromers-latest-poetry-collection-an-excerpt

 Tomas Tranströmer