Icelandic Hurricane
No earth tremor, but a skyquake. Turner could have painted
it, secured by ropes. A single mitten whirled past right now, several miles
from its hand. Facing the storm I am heading for that house on the other side
of the field. I flutter in the hurricane. I am being x-rayed, my skeleton hands
in its application for discharge. Panic grows while I tack about, I am wrecked,
I am wrecked and drown on dry land! How heavy it is, all that I suddenly have
to carry, how heavy it is for the butterfly to tow a barge! There at last. A
final bout of wrestling with the door. And now inside. Behind the
huge window-pane. What a strange and magnificent invention glass is—to be close
without being stricken. . . Outside a horde of transparent splinters of gigantic
shapes rush across the lava plain. But I flutter no more. I sit behind the
glass, still, my own portrait.
(Translated by Göran Malmqvist)
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