Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy Read Online Free Page A

time
    on the frozen Östergötland fields.
    I have not seen a single person. 
    In other parts of the world
    there are people who are born, live and die
    in a perpetual crowd. 
    To be always visible – to live
    in a swarm of eyes –
    a special expression must develop.
    Face coated with clay. 
    The murmuring rises and falls
    while they divide up among themselves
    the sky, the shadows, the sand grains. 
    I must be alone
    ten minutes in the morning
    and ten minutes in the evening.
    – Without a programme. 
    Everyone is queuing at everyone’s door.
    Many.
    One.
    TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER
translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton

Encounter
    We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
    A red wing rose in the darkness.
    And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
    One of us pointed to it with his hand.
    That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
    Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.
    O my love, where are they, where are they going
    The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
    I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.
    CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ
translated by Czesław Miłosz & Lillian Vallee

At the Fishhouses
    Although it is a cold evening,
    down by one of the fishhouses
    an old man sits netting,
    his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
    a dark purple-brown,
    and his shuttle worn and polished.
    The air smells so strong of codfish
    it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.
    The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
    and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
    to storerooms in the gables
    for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
    All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
    swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
    is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
    the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
    among the wild jagged rocks,
    is of an apparent translucence
    like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
    growing on their shoreward walls.
    The big fish tubs are completely lined
    with layers of beautiful herring scales
    and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
    with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
    with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
    Up on the little slope behind the houses,
    set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
    is an ancient wooden capstan,
    cracked, with two long bleached handles
    and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
    where the ironwork has rusted.
    The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
    He was a friend of my grandfather.
    We talk of the decline in the population
    and of codfish and herring
    while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
    There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
    He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
    from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
    the blade of which is almost worn away. 
    Down at the water’s edge, at the place
    where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
    descending into the water, thin silver
    tree trunks are laid horizontally
    across the gray stones, down and down
    at intervals of four or five feet. 
    Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
    element bearable to no mortal,
    to fish and to seals…One seal particularly
    I have seen here evening after evening.
    He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
    like me a believer in total immersion,
    so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
    I also sang ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’.
    He stood up in the water and regarded me
    steadily, moving his head a little.
    Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
    almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
    as if it were against his better judgment.
    Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
    the clear gray icy water…Back, behind us,
    the dignified tall firs begin.
    Bluish, associating with their shadows,
    a million Christmas trees stand
    waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
    above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
    I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
    slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
    icily free above the stones,
    above the