Thursday, March 27, 2008

628. A Dark Swimming Figure - Tomos Tranströmer

Translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton

About a prehistoric painting
on a rock in the Sahara:
a dark swimming figure
in an old river which is young.

Without weapons or strategy,
neither at rest nor quick
and cut from his own shadow
gliding on the bed of the stream.

He struggled to make himself free
from a slumbering green picture,
to come at last to the shore
and be one with his own shadow.

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