27 March 2015

for Tomas Transtromer

Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer died today. Here is a poem from his Selected Poems, edited by Robert Hass.

The Half-Finished Heaven

Despondency breaks off its course.

Anguish breaks off its course.
The vulture breaks off its flight.

The eager light streams out,

even the ghosts take a drink.

And our paintings see daylight,

our red beasts of the ice-age studios.

Everything begins to look around.

We walk in the sun in hundreds.

Each man is a half-open door

leading to a room for everyone.

The endless ground under us.


The water is shining among the trees.


The lake is a window into the earth.


Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Fulton

2 comments:

Civic Center said...

That feels like a fully-finished heaven to me. Nice remembrance.

Patrick J. Vaz said...

Glad you liked it. When I opened my copy of the book, this was the first poem I saw. I looked at some others but figured I'd been given spirit guidance, so half-finished heaven it was.