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Poems I'd like to have written
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Romanesque
arches
by Tomas
Tranströmer,
translated by Robert Bly
Tourists
have crowded into the
half-dark of the
enormous Romanesque
church.
Vault opening behind vault and no perspective.
A few candle flames flickered.
An
angel whose face I couldn't
see embraced me
and his whisper went all through my body:
Don't be ashamed to be a human being—be
proud!
Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly.
You'll never be complete, and that's as it should be.
Tears
blinded me
as we were herded out into the fiercely sunlit piazza,
together with Mr and Mrs Jones, Herr Tanaka and
Signora Sabatini—
within
each of them
vault after vault opened endlessly.
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