Seeing through the Ground
Translated By Patty Crane
The white sun melts into the smog.
The light drips, working its way down
to my subterranean eyes that lie
deep under the city and gaze upward,
seeing the place from below: streets, foundations—
like aerial views of a wartime city,
but the reverse—a mole’s photograph:
silent rectangles in muted colors.
Where decisions are made. The bones of the dead
can’t be told from those of the living.
The sunlight intensifies and spreads, flooding
into aircraft cabins and peapods.
Translated from the Swedish
Notes:
Read the Swedish-language original, “Markgenomskådande.”
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)