Tomas Tranströmer:
__Along the river__
Conversing with contemporaries I saw heard behind their faces a flood
running, pulling the willing and unwilling into itself.
The creature with cemented eyes who wants to be hurled current-wise
into the waterfall throws himself forward, without a shiver, in a
furious hunger for simplicity.
There is a pull from the increasingly rough waters,
such as at the point where the river narrows and turns into a
waterfall -- the place where I rested from a journey through dry woods
one night in June: the transistor gives us the latest news from the
emergency session: Kosygin, Eban.*
A few thoughts pierce in despair.
A few people are missing from the city.
Floods of water hurl out from under the suspension bridge
and past us. Here comes the timber! Some trees
steer like torpedoes straight forward. Others turn crosswise:
stubbornly, helplessly revolving into nowhere,
and then there are some who run their noses against the riverbanks,
steering towards the rocks and clusters of wood, and get stuck there
to pile up as folded hands
immovable in the thunder.
These things I saw heard from the suspension bridge with some boys in
a cloud of mosquitoes. Their bikes were buried in greenery -- only
their horns peered out.
(From the collection Seeing in the Dark, Mörkerseende, 1970. Transl.
Torgeir Fjeld.)
* On June 20, 1967 Prime Minister of the then Soviet Union, Aleksei N.
Kosygin, appeared at a United Nations emergency meeting on Middle East
issues after the Arab-Israeli war of that year. Following Kosygin's
talk, Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban, spoke in defense of his
country's actions against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
Mvh. / Yours sincerely,
Torgeir Fjeld, PhD
http://torgeirfjeld.com/
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