Open and Closed Spaces
Translated By Patty Crane
A man feels the world with his work like a glove.
He rests for a while at midday and has laid his gloves on the shelf.
Where they suddenly grow, spreading out
and darkening the whole house from within.
The darkened house is in the midst of the spring winds.
“Amnesty,” goes whispering through the grass: “amnesty.”
A boy runs with an invisible line angling up into the sky
where his wild dreams about the future fly like a kite bigger than the suburbs.
From a peak farther north, you can see the infinite blue carpet of the pine forest
where the cloud-shadows
are standing still.
No, flying along.
Translated from the Swedish
Notes:
Read the Swedish-language original, “Öppna och slutna rum.”
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)