December 8, 201114 yr Thomas Tranströmer is the recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. There is a new book edited by Robert Hass on Tranströmer's poems and I would like to share one of them. After the Attack The sick boy. Locked in a vision with tongue stiff as a horn. He sits with his back towards the painting of a wheatfield. The bandage around his jaw reminds one of an embalming. His spectacles are thick as a driver's. Nothing has any answer and is sudden as a telephone ringing in the night. But the painting there. It is a landscape that makes one feel peaceful even though the wheat is a golden storm. Blue, fiery blue sky and driving clouds. Beneath in the yellow waves some white shirts are sailing: threshers-they cast no shadow. At the far end of the field a man seems to be looking this way. A broad hat leaves his face in shadow. He seems to look at the dark shape in the room here, as though to help. Gradually the painting begins to stretch and open behind the boy who is sick and sunk in himself. It throws sparks and makes noise. Every wheathead throws off light as if to wake him up! The other man-in the wheat-makes a sign. He has come nearer. No one notices it.
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