A letter from America set me off, drove me out
on a white night in June through the empty suburban streets
among built blocks, cool as blueprints, too new to have memories.
The letter in my pocket. My unquiet raging stride a kind of prayer.
Where you are now, evil and good really do have faces.
Here, it's mostly a struggle between roots, numbers, transitions of light.
Those that run messages for death don't shy from daylight.
They govern from glass offices. They swell in the sun.
They lean over their desks and look at you askance.
Far away from that, I find myself in front of one of the new buildings.
Many windows merging into one window.
The light of the night sky and the swaying of the trees are caught there:
in this still mirror-lake, up-ended in the summer night.
Violence seems unreal
for awhile.
--Tomas Transtromer, "Out in the Open" (translated by Robin Robertson)
[photo: last night's sunset by db.]
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