Meditações - The snake-clock’s pointer licks the silence

The Indoors is Endless

It’s spring in 1827, Beethoven

hoists his death-mask and sails off.

 

The grindstones are turning in Europe’s windmills.

The wild geese are flying northwards.

 

Here is the north, here is Stockholm

swimming palaces and hovels.

 

The logs in the royal fireplace

collapse from Attention to At Ease.

 

Peace prevails, vaccine and potatoes,

but the city wells breathe heavily.

 

Privy barrels in sedan chairs like paschas

are carried by night over the North Bridge.

 

The cobblestones make them stagger

mamselles loafers gentlemen.

 

Implacably still, the sign-board

with the smoking blackamoor.

 

So many islands, so much rowing

with invisible oars against the current!

 

The channels open up, April May

and sweet honey dribbling June.

 

The heat reaches islands far out.

The village doors are open, except one.

 

The snake-clock’s pointer licks the silence.

The rock slopes glow with geology’s patience.

 

It happened like this, or almost.

It is an obscure family tale

 

about Erik, done down by a curse

disabled by a bullet through the soul.

 

He went to town, met an enemy

and sailed home sick and grey.

 

Keeps to his bed all that summer.

The tools on the wall are in mourning.

 

He lies awake, hears the woolly flutter

of night moths, his moonlight comrades.

 

His strength ebbs out, he pushes in vain

against the iron-bound tomorrow.

 

And the God of the depths cries out of the depths

‘Deliver me! Deliver yourself!’

 

All the surface action turns inwards.

He’s taken apart, put together.

 

The wind rises and the wild rose bushes

catch on the fleeing light.

 

The future opens, he looks into

the self-rotating kaleidoscope

 

sees indistinct fluttering faces

family faces not yet born.

 

By mistake his gaze strikes me

as I walk around here in Washington

 

among grandiose houses where only  

every second column bears weight.

 

White buildings in crematorium style

where the dream of the poor turns to ash.

 

The gentle downward slope gets steeper

and imperceptibly becomes an abyss.

Tomas Transtromer, “The Indoors is Endless” from New and Collected Poems