Tomas Tranströmer of Sweden Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Swedish Academy says Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer has won the 2011 Nobel Prize in literature.
 The academy said it awarded the 80-year-old poet “because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.” /NEW YORK TIMES

POEM BY TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER:

SCHUBERTIANA

I.Outside New York, a high place where with one glance you take in the houses where eight million human beings live. The giant city over there is a long flimmery drift, a spiral galaxy seen from the side. Inside the galaxy, coffee cups are being pushed across the desk, department store windows beg, a whirl of shoes that leave no trace behind. Fire escapes climbing up, elevator doors that silently close, behind triple locked doors a steady swell of voices. Slumped-over bodies doze in subway cars, catacombs in motion. I know also–statistics to the side–that at this instant in some room down there Schubert is being played, and for that person the notes are more real than all the rest.

**
“A long flimmery drift” indeed. I think “a spiral galazy seen from the side” is one of the most apt and evocative metaphors I have encountered, perhaps simply because I know the several candidate locations he might have written from — know them and share his perception, if not his brilliant artistry.