Silence, Tomas Tranströmer | translation by Patty Crane

← v10n1, Spring 2011

Walk past, they are buried . . .

A cloud glides over the sun’s disk.

Starvation is a tall building

that moves about by night—

in the bedroom an elevator shaft opens,

a dark rod pointing toward the interior.

Flowers in the ditch. Fanfare and silence.

Walk past, they are buried . . .

The table silver survives in giant shoals

down deep where the Atlantic is black.

translation mortality grief

Patty Crane

Patty Crane’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary , Bellevue Literary Review, RUNES, The Massachusetts Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and West Branch , among other journals. Her awards include the 2004 Two Rivers Review Poetry Prize and Atlanta Review’s 2005 International Publication Prize.