Nobel Prize

Swedish Sju strofer och dagar Jag var bara det, som du berörde med handen, över vilket du lutade pannan i nattens korpsvarta djup. Jag var bara det, som du vagt kunde skönja där nere; först oklarheten inkarnerad, långt senare – ansiktsdrag. Det var du som, het, i mitt vänstra och mitt högra öra skapade musslan…

English Seven Strophes I was but what you’d brush with your palm, what your leaning brow would hunch to in evening’s raven-black hush. I was but what your gaze in that dark could distinguish: a dim shape to begin with, later – features, a face. It was you, on my right, on my left, with…

Autobiography Sometimes when she would talk about herself my mother would say: My life was sad and quiet, I always walked on tip-toe. But if I got a little angry and stamped my foot the cups, which had been my mother’s, would tinkle on the dresser and make me laugh. At the moment of my…

Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication For Mary Heaney I. Sunlight There was a sunlit absence. The helmeted pump in the yard heated its iron, water honeyed in the slung bucket and the sun stood like a griddle cooling against the wall of each long afternoon. So, her hands scuffled over the bakeboard, the reddening stove…

Lightenings viii The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise Were all at prayers inside the oratory A ship appeared above them in the air. The anchor dragged along behind so deep It hooked itself into the altar rails And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill, A crewman shinned and grappled down…

The Haw Lantern The wintry haw is burning out of season, crab of the thorn, a small light for small people, wanting no more from them but that they keep the wick of self-respect from dying out, not having to blind them with illumination. But sometimes when your breath plumes in the frost it takes…