Black Postcards

In the cold of such a stormy night that made one forget the tropics, we had our bowls of approximations of beef bourginon and hunks of corn bread, and were reading, aloud, the stark verses of Tomas Tranströmer. The honour of the Nobel Prize for Literature came in 2011, just in time, before his suit was ready.

BLACK POSTCARDS

I
The calendar is full but the future is blank.
The wires hum the folk-tune of some forgotten land.
Snow-fall on the lead-still sea. Shadows
scrabble on the pier.

II
In the middle of life, death comes
to take your measurements. The visit
is forgotten and life goes on. But the suit
is being sewn on the sly.

Tomas Tranströmer, The Deleted World (English translation by Robin Robertson)