By Tomas Gösta Tranströmer
Translated by Robert Bly
I would like to introducing a unique book by a Nobel Prize-winning author:
The Half-Finished Heaven by Tomas Gösta Tranströmer, a Swedish poet and psychologist who is considered one of the most influential poets of the past century. His work experience with juvenile delinquents and people with disabilities had a profound impact on his poetry and writings.
The Nobel Prize in Literature judges praised his work, stating that:
"Through his condensed, translucent images, Tomas Tranströmer gives us fresh access to reality."
His poems, using the shortest sentences, vividly depict nature and human identity, and this very perspective made him worthy of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Why is Tranströmer recognized as a global poet? The answer might be quite simple.
This book, The Half-Finished Heaven, is solid proof of his merit for such a title.
His poetry is not just inspired by his immediate surroundings; he has written about the cold of Alaska, been captivated by Africa and its wildlife, narrated stories from the shores of bustling ports filled with travelers, and depicted the silence of vast deserts.
He draws inspiration from ancient times and historical narratives, lives in the present, and is, of course, troubled by visions of the future.
Another reason for Tranströmer’s global recognition is the translation of his symbolic and dreamlike poetry into more than sixty languages worldwide. His poems have inspired many young poets across the globe.
Writing and music were integral parts of his life. Even after suffering a stroke in 1990, which caused speech and movement difficulties, he continued playing the piano and writing with one hand. His musical knowledge added a unique beauty and delicacy to his poetry. His expertise in psychology also helped him explore and express the mental traits and inner conflicts of human beings in his poetry. Tranströmer’s poems capture emotional complexities and human relationships in the simplest and most comprehensible words.
His poetry reflects human emotions, including loneliness and people’s relationships with themselves, others, and nature.
Tranströmer, known for depicting reality through poetry, often merges the mental world of individuals—even animals—with external realities in the most beautiful way possible, showcasing the transition between the two: Integration between mental imagination and external reality.
Many of us are aware that translating poetry presents far greater challenges than translating prose due to cultural differences, emotional depth, imagery, and symbolism. The biggest obstacle is the rhythmic and musical patterns of language, which cannot be fully preserved in a word-for-word translation. While prose can be translated in a way that remains comprehensible with the help of linguistic knowledge or translation tools, poetry—due to its form, structure, and emotional impact—cannot be translated as easily. The result is often a dull and raw text that, at best, is merely an interpretation of the poem.
A reader fluent in both the original and translated languages, as well as their respective cultures, can clearly perceive the shortcomings of a poetry translation. I personally experienced this when, as a soldier-teacher,I read a Persian translation of Poems from the book of Heydar Baba of Shahriar to my students. Despite the translator’s high skill, I could feel the disharmony in the translation.
Although not all texts in this book follow the structure we traditionally associate with modern poetry—some are prose poems or closer to poetic prose—they still retain poetic features such as imagery, musical tone, rhythm, and emotional depth.
If I were to give an example of a Persian equivalent, I would say "«The Leopards Who Have Run with Me» by Bijan Najdi is one of the best examples.
Notes from book:
The Man Awakened by a Song above His Roof
Morning, May rain. The city is silent still
as a sheepherder's hut. Streets silent. And in the sky a plane motor is rumbling bluish green -
The window is open.
The dream of the man stretched out sleeping
becomes at that instant transparent. He turns, begins to grope for the tool of his consciousness-
almost in space.
page 5
Kyrie
At times my life suddenly opens its eyes in the dark.
A feeling of masses of people pushing blindly.
through the streets, excitedly, toward some miracle,
while I remain here and no one sees me.
It is like the child who falls asleep in terror
listening to the heavy thumps of his heart.
For a long, long time till morning puts his light in the locks
and the doors of darkness open.
Page 7
The Couple
They turn the light off, and its white globe glows
an instant and then dissolves, like a tablet
in a glass of darkness. Then a rising
The hotel walls shoot up into heaven's darkness.
Their movements have grown softer, and they sleep,
but their most secret thoughts begin to meet
like two colors that meet and run together
on the wet paper in a schoolboy's painting.
It is dark and silent. The city however has come nearer tonight.
With its windows turned off. Houses have come.
They stand packed and waiting very near,
a mob of people with blank faces.
Page11
The Tree and the Sky
The tree is walking around in the rain
moving past us in the squishy gray.
It has a job to do. It picks life out of the rain
like a blackbird in a cherry orchard.
As soon as the rain stops, the tree stops too.
It simply stands, motionless in the clear nights,
waiting just as we do for that moment
when snowflakes will throw themselves out in space.
Page 14
Dark Shape Swimming
A Stone Age painting
on a Sahara boulder:
a shadowy shape that swims
on some ancient fresh river.
With no weapon, and no plan,
neither at rest nor hurrying,
the swimmer is parted from his shadow
which is slipping along the bottom.
He has fought to get free
from millions of sleeping leaves,
to make it to the other shore
and join his shadow again.
Page 16
The Half-Finished Heaven
Cowardice breaks off on its path.
Anguish breaks off on its path.
The vulture breaks off in its flight.
The eager light runs into the open,
even the ghosts take a drink.
And our paintings see the air,
red beasts of the ice-age studios.
Everything starts to look around.
We go out in the sun by hundreds.
Every person is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.
The endless field under us.
Water glitters between the trees.
The lake is a window into the earth.
Page 17
Open and Closed Space
With his work, as with a glove, a man feels the universe.
At noon he rests a while, and lays the gloves aside on a shelf.
There they suddenly start growing, grow huge
and make the whole house dark from inside.
The darkened house is out in the April winds.
"Amnesty," the grass whispers, "amnesty."
A boy runs along with an invisible string that goes right up into the sky.
There his wild dream of the future flies like a kite, bigger than his town.
Farther to the north, you see from a hill the blue matting of fir trees
on which the shadows of the clouds
do not move.
No, they are moving.
Page 21
Solitude
I.
Right here I was nearly killed one night in February.
My car slewed on the ice, sideways,
into the other lane. The oncoming cars-
their headlights-came nearer.
My name, my daughters, my job
slipped free and fell behind silently,
farther and farther back. I was anonymous,
like a schoolboy in a lot surrounded by enemies.
The approaching traffic had powerful lights.
They shone on me while I turned and turned
the wheel in a transparent fear that moved like eggwhite.
The seconds lengthened out-making more room-
they grew long as hospital buildings.
It felt as if you could just take it easy
and loaf a bit
before the smash came.
Then firm land appeared: a helping sandgrain
or a marvelous gust of wind. The car took hold
and fishtailed back across the road.
A signpost shot up, snapped off-a ringing sound-
tossed into the dark.
Came all quiet. I sat there in my seatbelt
and watched someone tramp through the blowing snow
to see what had become of me.
II.
I have been walking a while
on the frozen Swedish fields
and I have seen no one.
In other parts of the world
people are born, live, and die
in a constant human crush.
To be visible all the time-to live
in a swarm of eyes-
surely that leaves its mark on the face.
Features overlaid with clay.
The low voices rise and fall
as they divide up
heaven, shadows, grains of sand.
I have to be by myself
ten minutes every morning,
ten minutes every night,
-and nothing to be done!
We all line up to ask each other for help.
Millions.
One.
Pages 33-4
A Few Moments
The dwarf pine on marsh grounds holds its head up: a dark rag.
But what you see is nothing compared to the roots,
the widening, secretly groping, deathless or half-
deathless root system.
I you she he also put roots out.
Outside our common will.
Outside the City.
Rain drifts from the summer sky that's pale as milk.
It is as if my five senses were hooked up to some other creature
that moves with the same stubborn flow
as the runners in white circling the track as the night comes misting in.
Page 47
The Name
I got sleepy while driving and pulled in under a tree at the side of the road. Rolled up in the backseat and went to sleep. How long? Hours. Darkness had come.
All of a sudden I was awake, and didn't know who I was. I'm fully conscious, but that doesn't help. Where am I? WHO am 1? I am something that has just woken up in a backseat, throwing itself around in panic like a cat in a gunnysack. Who am I?
After a long while my life comes back to me. My name comes to me like an angel. Outside the castle walls there is a trumpet blast (as in the Leonora Overture) and the footsteps that will save me come quickly down the long staircase. It's me coming! It's me!
But it is impossible to forget the fifteen-second battle in the hell of nothingness, a few feet from a major highway where the cars slip past with their lights on.
Page 48
Further In
It's the main highway leading in,
the sun soon down.
Traffic backs up, creeps along,
it's a torpid glittering dragon.
I am a scale on that dragon.
The red sun all at once
blazes in my windshield,
pouring in,
and makes me transparent.
Some writing shows
up inside me-words
written with invisible ink
appearing when the paper
is held over a fire.
I know that I have to go far away,
straight through the city, out
the other side, then step out
and walk a long time in the woods.
Walk in the tracks of the badger.
Growing hard to see, nearly dark.
Stones lie about on the moss.
One of those stones is precious.
It can change everything.
It can make the darkness shine
It's the light switch for the whole country.
Everything depends on it.
Look at it... touch it...
Page 56
Late May
Apple and cherry trees in bloom help the town to float
in the soft smudgy May night, white life jackets, thoughts go far away
Stubborn grass and weeds beat their wings.
The mailbox shines calmly; what is written cannot be taken back.
A mild cooling wind goes through your shirt, feeling for the heart.
Apple trees and cherry trees laugh silently at Solomon.
They blossom inside my tunnel. And I need them
not to forget but to remember.
Page 57
At Funchal
(Island of Madeira)
On the beach there's a seafood place, simple, a shack thrown On by survivors of the shipwreck. Many turn back at the door, but not the sea winds. A shadow stands deep inside his smoky hut frying two fish according to an old recipe from Atlantis, tiny garlic explosions, oil running over sliced tomatoes, every morsel says that the ocean wishes us well, a humming from the deep places.
She and I look into each other. It's like climbing the wild- flowered mountain slopes without feeling the least bit tired. We've sided with the animals, they welcome us, we don't age. But we have experienced so much together over the years, in- cluding those times when we weren't so good (as when we stood in line to give blood to the healthy giant-he said he wanted a transfusion), incidents which should have separated us if they hadn't united us, and incidents which we've totally forgotten though they haven't forgotten us! They've turned to stones, dark and light, stones in a scattered mosaic. And now it happens: the pieces move toward each other, the mosaic ap- pears and is whole. It waits for us. It glows down from the hotel-room wall, some figure violent and tender. Perhaps a face, we can't take it all in as we pull off our clothes.
After dusk we go out. The dark powerful paw of the cape lies thrown out into the sea. We walk in swirls of human beings, we are cuffed around kindly, among soft tyrannies, everyone chat- ters excitedly in the foreign tongue. "No man is an island." We gain strength from them, but also from ourselves. From what is inside that the other person can't see. That which can only meet itself. The innermost paradox, the underground garage flowers, the vent toward the good dark. A drink that bubbles in an empty glass. An amplifier that magnifies silence. A path that grows over after every step. A book that can only be read in the dark.
Page 64
The Cuckoo
A cuckoo sat cooing in a birch just north of the house. The sound was so powerful that I first thought it was an opera singer performing a cuckoo imitation. Surprised I saw a bird. Its tailfeathers moved up and down with every note, like a pump handle at a well. The bird hopped on both feet, then turned its body around and cried out to all four directions. Then it rose and flew muttering something over the house and flew a long way into the west.... The summer grows old and everything collapses into a single melancholy sigh. Cuculus canoras returns to the tropics. Its time in Sweden is over. It won't be long! As a matter of fact the cuckoo is a citizen of Zaire. I am not so much in love with travel any longer. But the journey visits me. In these days when I am pushed farther and farther into a corner, when the tree rings widen, when I need reading glasses. Many more things happen than we can carry. There is nothing to be astonished about. These thoughts carry me just as loyally as Susi and Chuma carried Livingston's mummified body all the way through Africa.
Page 89
April and Silence
Spring lies abandoned.
A ditch the color of dark violet
moves alongside me
giving no images back.
The only thing that shines
are some yellow flowers.
I am carried inside
my own shadow like a violin
in its black case.
The only thing I want to say
hovers just out of reach
like the family silver
at the pawnbroker's.
Page 94
