April is POETRY MONTH!

I have been away for far too long. Since April is National Poetry Month, in order to re-connect with that which I really love, I am planning on posting a poem each day. We'll see if this actually happens, but I think it's a good goal. Last night, I read "The Deleted World," translations/imitations of Tomas Transtromers' work by Robin Robertson. Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011. This edition, published in the U.S. last year (though in the U.K. in 2006) offers the original Swedish in facing pages to the English. I really appreciate it when translations do this; even though I can't read the original in any way, it's beautiful to see, and I can try and listen for the original sounds.

To Friends Behind a Border
I
I wrote to you so cautiously. But what I couldn't say
filled and grew like a hot-air balloon
and finally floated away through the night sky.

II
Now my letter is with the censor. He lights his lamp.
In its glare my words leap like monkeys at a wire mesh,
clattering it, stopping to bare their teeth.

III
Read between the lines. We will meet in two hundred years
when the microphones in the hotel walls are forgotton -
when they can sleep at last, become ammonites.


-Tomas Transtromer, tr. Robin Robertson