Six Winters Tomas Tranströmer in translation

Six Winters

A translation of Tomas Tranströmer's "Sex Vintrar"


1
In the black hotel a child sleeps.
Outside: the winter night
where monster eyed dice tumble.

2
An elite of dead knights is turned to stone
in Katarina graveyard
where the wind rattles in its armour from Svalbard.

3
One war-winter when I lay sick
a colossal icicle grew outside my window.
Bystander and harpoon, inexplicable memory.

4
Ice hangs down from the edge of the roof.
Icicles: the upside down Gothic cut.
Weird cattle, udders of glass.

5
In a shunting, an empty train carriage.
Poised. A lion rampant
The journey in its claws.

6.
Tonight snow-mist, moonlight. The moonlight jellyfish herself
hovers over us. Echoes of our laughs
on the way home. Enchanted path.



@Paul Larkin
Mí Eanáir 2012

(Source text Tomas Tranströmer - Samlade Dikter - 1954 1996)