Prelude by Tomas Tranströmer

Prelude

Waking up is a jump, a skydive from the dream.

Free of the smothering whirl the traveler

sinks toward morning's green zone.

Things start to flare. He perceives—in the trembling lark's

position—the mighty tree-root systems'

underground swinging lamps. But standing

above—in tropical profusion—is verdure, with

upraised arms, listening

to the rhythm of an invisible pumping station. And he

sinks toward summer, is lowered

into its blinding crater, down

through shafts of ages green with damp

quaking under the turbine of the sun. So ceases

this vertical flight through the moment, and the wings spread out

into the osprey's repose over streaming water.

The Bronze Age trumpet's

tone of exile

hovers over bottomlessness.

In the first hours of day consciousness can embrace the world

just as the hand grasps a sun-warm stone.

The traveler stands under the tree. After

the plunge through death's whirling vortex, will

a great light unfurl over his head?

(Translated by Rika Lesser)