A Winter Night by Tomas Transtromer, Translated by Robin Robertson

It's an unseasonably warm January here in Minnesota, but winter has been severe in other parts of the world, such as Russia, China and India.  I therefore feel happy about sharing this poem by 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Tomas Transtromer.

Transtromer is a living legend in Sweden, and not without reason.  I selected the translation by Scottish poet Robin Robertson, because I have already put up a number of translations by Robert Bly.  The translations are similar, in my opinion.

If you liked the poem "The Man Watching" by Rainer Maria Rilke, you might very well like this poem also.  It has a similar vibration of contemplating and confronting things that are stronger than us.

The storm puts its mouth to the house 

and blows to get a tone. 

I toss and turn, my closed eyes 

reading the storm's text.

The child's eyes grow wide in the dark 

and the storm howls for him. 

Both love the swinging lamps; 

both are halfway towards speech.

The storm has the hands and wings of a child. 

Far away, travelers run for cover. 

The house feels its own constellation of nails 

holding the walls together.

The night is calm in our rooms, 

where the echoes of all footsteps rest 

like sunken leaves in a pond, 

but the night outside is wild.

A darker storm stands over the world. 

It puts its mouth to our soul 

and blows to get a tone. We are afraid 

the storm will blow us empty.

 

You can find this version of the poem in the book "The Deleted World."  You can find Robert Bly's translation in the book "The Half-Finished Heaven."