Prelude

Prelude
Tomas Tranströmer


Awakening is a parachute jump from the dream.
Freed from the choking vortex, the diver
sinks towards the green map of morning.
Things magnify. He sees, from the fluttering lark's
position, huge tree-root systems
like branchings of subterranean chandeliers. Above ground,
in tropical flood, earth's greenery
stands with lifted arms, as if listening
to the beat of invisible pistons. And he
sinks towards summer, is lowered
into its dazzling crater, lowered
between fissures of moist green eons
trembling under the sun's turbine. Then halts
the downward dive through time's eyeblink, the wingspread
becomes an osprey's glide over streaming water.
Bronze Age trumpets:
their outlaw tune
hangs motionless over the void.


In the day's first hours consciousness can own the world
like a hand enclosing a sun-warm stone.
The skydiver stands under the tree.
With the plunge through death's vortex
will light's great chute spread over his head?


To my great delight and much cheers, a hearty congratulations to Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, who has won the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature.
The reason for his win? "...through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality".
Tranströmer's words are so mesmerizing, capturing our world and the human understanding with such depth, it is fair to say that he is one of a kind- not to mention he's also a favourite poet of mine! He is truly one of the greatest Scandinavian poets.
Although you may not have known of his existence previously, you sure do now. Look into some of his works at your local bookstores today.