Midday Thaw
Translated By Patty Crane
The morning air delivered its letters with stamps that glowed.
The snow glistened and all burdens were lifted—a kilo weighed 700 grams, no more.
High over the ice the sun was flying in place, both warm and cold.
The wind advanced gently, as if pushing a baby stroller.
Families went outside, seeing open sky for the first time in a long while.
We found ourselves in the first chapter of a captivating story.
The sunshine stuck to all the fur hats like pollen to the bees
and the sunshine stuck to the name winter and stayed there until winter’s end.
A still life of harvested logs on the snow made me thoughtful. I asked them:
“Are You coming along to my childhood?” They answered, “Yes.”
Deep in the thicket, there was a mumbling of words in a new language:
the vowels were blue sky, the consonants black twigs, and spoken so softly over the snow.
But the jet curtsying in its thundering skirts
intensified the strength of silence on Earth.
Translated from the Swedish
Notes:
Read the Swedish-language original, “Dagsmeja.”
From The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Patty Crane. Copyright © 2011 by Tomas Tranströmer. Translation copyright © 2023 by Patty Crane. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org.
Source: Poetry (July/August 2023)