POEM OF THE DAY: Robertson's versions of Transtromer's "Calling Home" and "Mi
Today, I sat down to spend some time with the poems of Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer (1931-2015), something I had yet to do. Specifically, I spent some time with Robin Robertson's "versions" of Tranströmer's The Deleted World. Robertson, in his introduction, makes the distinction between "versions" and "literal translations": "I have attempted to steer a middle ground between Lowell's rangy, risk-taking rewritings [in Lowell's Imitations, (1962)] and the traditional, strictly literal approach. I have kept the shape of the poem, opened out its sense more clearly, and tried––as Lowell rightly insists one must try––to get the tone" (xii).
Read for yourself two examples of the splendid and uncanny poems that emerged from this experiment.
CALLING HOME
Our phonecall spilled out into the dark
and glittered between the countryside and the town
like the mess of a knife-fight.
Afterwards, all night jittery and spent in the hotel bed,
I dreamt I was the needle in a compass
some orienter bore through the forest with a spinning heart.
MIDWINTER
A blue light
streams out of my clothes.
Midwinter.
Ringing tambourines of ice.
I close my eyes.
There is a silent world,
there is a crack
where the dead
are smuggled over the border.
