“I wear the chains I forged in life.”
Jacob Marley’s gonna getcha! (Does that candle flame have a face?)
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Schubertiana
Tomas Tranströmer
I.
Outside New York, a high place where with one glance you take in the houses where eight million human beings live. The giant city over there is a long flimmery drift, a spiral galaxy seen from the side. Inside the galaxy, coffee cups are being pushed across the desk, department store windows beg, a whirl of shoes that leave no trace behind. Fire escapes climbing up, elevator doors that silently close, behind triple locked doors a steady swell of voices. Slumped-over bodies doze in subway cars, catacombs in motion. I know also–statistics to the side–that at this instant in some room down there Schubert is being played, and for that person the notes are more real than all the rest.
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“A long flimmery drift” indeed. I think “a spiral galazy seen from the side” is one of the most apt and evocative metaphors I have encountered, perhaps simply because I know the several candidate locations he might have written from — know them and share his perception, if not his brilliant artistry.
All translations are by Robert Bly from The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations by Robert Bly, published by Harper Collins.
(Source: tomastranstromer.net)
