Open and Closed Spaces
--Tomas Tranströmer (trans. by Robin Fulton)

A man feels the world with his work like a glove.
He rests for a while at midday having laid aside the gloves on a shelf.
There they suddenly grow, spread
and black out the whole house from inside.

The blacked-out house is away out among the winds of spring.
“Amnesty,” runs the whisper in the grass: “amnesty.”
A boy sprints with an invisible line slanting up in the sky
where his wild dream of the future lies like a kite
.........bigger than the suburb.

Further north you can see from a summit the blue endless
.........carpet of pine forest
where the cloud shadows
are standing still.
No, are flying.




Poem and illustration from Poetry Daily's series running through the end of March to help us all mange through the coronavirus epidemic.