[New-Poetry] Poems by Years

[James Cervantes]

>From the Island, 1860

1

One day as she rinsed clothes from the jetty
the chill of the strait rose through her arms
into her life.

Her tears froze into a pair of glasses.
The island raised itself in the grass
and the banner of Baltic herring swayed in the depths.

2

And the swarm of smallpox caught up with him
clustered onto his face.
He lies and stares at the ceiling.

What plying of oars up the silence.
The moment's eternally running stain
the moment's eternally bleeding point.


- Tomas Transtromer, _The Sad Gondola_, trans. Robin Fulton


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