The Half-Finished Heaven: Selected Poems

by Tomas Tranströmer, Robert Bly (Translation)

From the Winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature

The contemporary Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer is a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature and has a prestigious worldwide reputation. Robert Bly, a longtime friend and confidant of Tranströmer's, as well as one of his first translators, has carefully chosen and translated the finest of Tranströmer's poems to create this cherished and invaluable collection.

Contents

Introduction: "Upward into the Depths" by Robert Bly

1
From
17 Poems (1954)
Secrets on the Road (1958)
The Half-Finished Heaven (1962)

Evening—Morning
Storm
The Man Awakened by a Song above His Roof
Track
Kyrie
After the Attack
Balakirev's Dream (1905)
The Couple
Allegro
Lamento
The Tree and the Sky
A Winter Night
Dark Shape Swimming
The Half-Finished Heaven
Nocturne

2
From
Resonance and Footprints (1966)
Night Vision (1970)

Open and Closed Space
From an African Diary
Morning Bird Songs
Summer Grass
About History
After a Death
Under Pressure
Slow Music
Out in the Open
Solitude
Breathing Space July
The Open Window
s26Preludes
The Bookcase
Outskirts
Going with the Current
Traffic
Night Duty
A Few Moments
The Name
Standing Up

3
From
Pathways (1973)
Truth Barriers (1978)

Elegy
The Scattered Congregation
Snow-Melting Time, '66
Further In
Late May
December Evening, '72
Seeing through the Ground
Guard Duty
Along the Lines (Far North)
At Funchal (Island of Madeira)
Calling Home
Citoyens
For Mats and Laila
After a Long Dry Spell
A Place in the Woods
Street Crossing
Below Freezing
Start of a Late Autumn Novel
From the Winter of 1947
The Clearing
Schubertiana

4
From
The Wild Market Square (1983)
For the Living and the Dead (1989)
Grief Gondola (1996)

From March '79
Fire Script
Black Postcards
Romanesque Arches
The Forgotten Commander
Vermeer
The Cuckoo
The Kingdom of Uncertainty
Three Stanzas
Two Cities
Island Life, 1860
April and Silence
Grief Gondola #2

Genres: Poetry, Nobel Prize, Swedish Literature, Sweden, Classics, Literature, Scandinavian Literature

154 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

His poetry, building on Modernism, Expressionism, and Surrealism, contains powerful imagery concerned with issues of fragmentation and isolation. “He has perfected a particular kind of epiphanic lyric, often in quatrains, in which nature is the active, energizing subject, and the self (if the self is present at all) is the object,” notes critic Katie Peterson in the Boston Review.

Critic and poet Tom Sleigh observed, in his Interview with a Ghost (2006), that “Tranströmer’s poems imagine the spaces that the deep then inhabits, like ground water gushing up into a newly dug well.”

His honors include the Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, the Aftonbladets Literary Prize, the Bonnier Award for Poetry, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Oevralids Prize, the Petrarch Prize in Germany, the Swedish Award from International Poetry Forum,the Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize, and especially the 2011 Nobel Prize in literature. His work has been translated into more than 50 languages.

Tranströmer suffered a stroke in 1990, and after a six-year silence published his collection Sorgegondolen (Grief Gondola) (1996). Prior to his stroke, he worked as a psychologist, focusing on the juvenile prison population as well as the disabled, convicts, and drug addicts. He lives in Sweden.

On Thursday, 6th of October 2011 he was awarded the Nobel prize in Literature "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality".

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

1/15/21: I read this again today, early, almost in one sitting, after hearing Kenneth Branagh read the poem I posted at the end of this review in the last episode, "A Troubled Man," in the BBC Wallander series based on Henning Mankell's ten novel series. It took my breath away to hear him read it, and it was a different poem, as a result of my hearing it and viewing especially that episode in the series, which I loved.

Original review, somewhat amended: Friend Jenn said I had to read Tranströmer, the Swedish poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2011 and died in March, 2015 at 83. Born working class, he took his degree in psychology to work as a psychologist with mostly juveniles in state institutions, a job he did most of his life. He played classical piano, and also wrote ten books of poetry. The main translator of his work is his long time friend Robert Bly, who chose and translated the selections from his work for this volume. Tranströmer had a stroke in 1990, after which he was unable to speak, and only play piano with one hand, which led composers to send him piano work transposed for one hand [if this is the only fact you read from anything this month, your life will already have been enriched, right?]

I had heard (I am not sure this is true) he was not popular in the world of academic poetry because he was accessible, much loved the world wide, and because he was seen as(this is worse to have heard) a spiritual poet, possibly even Christian (though there are no direct references to a specific religion in these poems), which in a postmodern age in the humanities is apparently akin to critical death (only old poets like Hopkins and Donne and Milton can be Christian!). But to my ears this work is in the good company of poets of the spirit, transcendent poets, poets of nature, poets of the soul (can we even say that in the world of poetry today?): Rilke, Neruda, Kabir, James Wright, Mary Oliver, and even Bly himself. I'd say this is an impressive club for him to have joined.

In these poems wonder happens. Magic. Dreams. Houses, trees, water become animated: "The tree is walking around in the rain." "The storm puts its lips to the house/ and blows to make a sound." Memorable images abound to help us see the world differently, to see it as alive and important.

Music is everywhere, Haydn, Schubert, the wind. ". . . at this moment in/ some room down there Schubert is being played, and for/ that person the notes are more real than all the rest."

The arts, the humanities, nature, are all sources of transcendence: "upward into/ the depths."

And the natural world speaks: "I came upon the tracks of reindeer in the snow/Speech but no words."

He writes always of the long Swedish winters: "I have been walking a while/ on the frozen Swedish fields/ and I have seen no one."

And Death/aging is always with him: "The whole universe is full!/ Fantastic to feel how my poem is growing/while I myself am shrinking."

But above he is all a poet of spirit: "The other world is also this one."

Can't you hear Rilke here? "At times my life suddenly opens its eyes in the dark. . . the doors of darkness open."

"Every person is a half-open door/ leading to a room for everyone."

Here's a whole poem:

Allegro

After a black day, I play Haydn,

and feel a little warmth in my hands.

The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.

The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.

The sound says that freedom exists

and someone pays no tax to Caesar.

I shove my hands in my haydnpockets

and act like a man who is calm about it all.

I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:

“We do not surrender. But want peace.”

The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;

rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.

The rocks roll straight through the house

but every pane of glass is still whole.

And one more, the title poem of this collection:

The Half-Finished Heaven

Despondency breaks off its course.
Anguish breaks off its course.
The vulture breaks off its flight.

The eager light streams out,
even the ghosts take a draught.

And our paintings see daylight,
our red beasts of the ice-age studios.

Everything begins to look around.
We walk in the sun in hundreds.

Each man is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.

The endless ground under us.

The water is shining among the trees.

The lake is a window into the earth.

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met him a few years ago when he was visiting his friend, one of the best Bulgarian poets Lyubomir Levchev.
We talked a little, I mean I talked, he was just listening. (Tranströmer suffered a stroke in 1990 that left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak.) Then he wrote on a napkin something that I will keep only for myself.
I still consider him one of the great poets I ever read. With Tomas Transtromer, there is no real comparison. He has been by far the most original, the most satisfying, and the most complete modern poet I have encountered. Read this book, feel it.
Read all his books and then you will feel something that only the great poets can give you – The Poetry of Silence!

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

On this final day of 2011, I share a transcendent poem:

From March '79

Being tired of people who come with words, but no speech,
I made my way to the snow-covered island.
The wild does not have words.
The pages free of handwriting stretched out on all sides!
I came upon the tracks of reindeer in the snow.
Speech but no words.

As we look back on a year of increased political polarization and as we anticipate the propagandizing and muck-racking misery of Campaign 2012 to come, Tomas Tranströmer's beautiful imagery has particular resonance. To escape from the miserable nothingness of punditry to the exquisite fullness of nature. To seek out silence, away from our Tower of Babel. What a dream. What a goal.

And another that struck deep, as I accept growing older and giving up on hopes and dreams because it is, it just is, too late.

Black Postcards

I.

The calendar all booked up, the future unknown.
The cable silently hums some folk song
but lacks a country. Snow falls in the gray area. Shadows
fight out on the dock.

II.

Halfway through your life, death turns up
and takes your pertinent measurements. We forget
the visit. Life goes on. But someone is sewing
the suit in silence.

What a powerful, chilling image. To acknowledge that somewhere, someone is quietly sewing your death suit. Not in malice, not for revenge, but because it is the way of mortality.

This slim volume, subtitled 'The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer' is extraordinary. I am grateful to the Nobel Committee for awarding Tranströmer its 2011 Prize in Literature. I'm a poetry ignoramus and would never have discovered Tranströmer but for the award.

The poems are short and the language simple, but therein lies the power. The stanzas are crystalline, they shimmer with light, they reflect with brilliant clarity, but quietly, sparely, like winter, like an icicle, like a lake. This is beautiful stuff.

And to end the year on a note of life and hope, from Vermeer

...Passing through walls hurts human beings, they get sick from
it,
but we have no choice.
It's all one world. Now to the walls.
The walls are a part of you.
One either knows that, or one doesn't; but it's the same for
everyone
except for small children. There aren't any walls for them.

The airy sky has taken its place leaning against the wall.
It is like a prayer to what is empty.
And what is empty turns its face to us
and whispers:
"I am not empty, I am open."

[Anima · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excerpt from book’s introduction
‘ He continued to work as a psychologist, this time for a labor organization funded by the State. He helped juvenile delinquents reenter society, persons with physical disabilities choose a career, and he counseled parole offenders and those in drug rehabilitation. Once, during a reading in New York, a member of the audience asked him if his work had affected his poetry. He did reply, but mentioned how odd it seemed that so few people asked him: “How has your poetry affected your work?” In a printed interview later, he remarked that he had early learned to admire active syntax when composing a poem. When counseling juveniles, he urged them to do likewise. If they were liable to say, “I found myself in this apartment …” or “As it happened, I …,” he urged them to say, “I broke the window and crawled in.”

A Few Moments
...
“It is as if my five senses were hooked up to
some other creature
that moves with the same stubborn flow
as the runners in white circling the track as the night comes
misting in.

[Kendrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a gift to have poetry translated by a poet, and to be translated by a close friend is even better. Tomas Transtromer is beloved and regularly cited in poetry twitter/instagram (no idea about tiktok, I don't go there), and it's easy to see why. Robert Bly's translations of Transtormer's poems -- surreal, imaginative and deeply observed -- are full of lovely images. The selected poems draw from Transtromer's oeuvre, from his earliest collections in the 1950s to his longer pieces from the 1990s/2000s.

Bly, in his afterword, said that Transtromer was interested in poems without philosophical or political baggage. I disagree: Transtromer is hardly apolitical. Consider his poem "Outskirts", which is speaks to modernization and technology in relation to the natural world:

Men in overalls the same color as earth rise from a ditch.
It's a transitional place, in stalemate, neither country nor city.
Construction cranes on the horizon want to take the big leap, but the clocks are against it.
Concrete piping scattered around laps at the light with cold tongues.
Auto-body shops occupy old barns.
Stones throw shadows as sharp as objects on the moon surface.
And these sites keep on getting bigger
like the land bought with Judas' silver: "a potter's field for burying strangers."

Transtromer looks at the liminal and the in-between. It's easy to characterize him as an imagist or a surrealist, but even in this mode he is making points about human consciousness and its attendant spirit.

December Evening, '72

Here I come the invisible man, perhaps in the employ
of some huge Memory that wants to live at this moment. And I drive by

the white church that's locked up. A saint made of wood is inside,
smiling helplessly, as if someone had taken his glasses.

He's alone. Everything else is now, now, now. Gravity
pulling us toward work in the dark and the bed at night. The war.

Whether it is Transtromer's own style, or an effect produced by Bly's translations, the poetry is epiphanic in its lyric voice. A pleasure to read, easily recommended for even non-readers of poetry.

--

Some links for further reading:

-> https://www.cprw.com/anchor-in-the-sh...
-> https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/...

[Imen Benyoub · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seeing through the Ground

The white sun melts away in the smog.
The light drips, works its way down
to my underground eyes that are there
under the city, and they see the city
from beneath: streets, foundations of houses—
like aerial photos of a wartime city
though reverse: a mole photograph …
speechless rectangles in gloomy colors.
Things are decided there. No one can tell
the bones of the dead from those of the living.
The sunshine increases, floods into
cockpits and into peapods.

[ciel]

this is a fascinating & beautiful collection, thank you so much eilidh!!! <33

macabre absurdness and the bleak and depressing atmosphere of Scandinavian cinema but also vulnerable, incredible imagery constructing, and uniquely musical in the way Tomas devotion for music is integrated into his writing and stirs his perceptions/ mental imagery (a similar thing, even though not to the same degree, occurs with art here). Not sure whether I've experienced music/poetry joint in that way before. He seems like he was a very interesting fellow and no surprise he got a Nobel.

Some favourites are Out in the Open, Below Freezing, Schubertina, The Half-Finished Heaven, Vermeer, Solitude, The Couple

[James Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a poem called "Allegro" Transtromer writes:

"The music is a house of glass standing on a slope,
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.

The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole."

My response to this volume of poetry, I suppose. It doesn't speak to me distinctly. He voices a low murmur under his breath. I have trouble hearing. It would help if he'd sing a bit, break a few windows. But there's little music here.

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

The man on a walk suddenly meets the old
giant oak like an elk turned to stone with
its enormous antlers against the dark green castle wall
of the fall ocean.

Storm from the north. It’s nearly time for the
rowanberries to ripen. Awake in the night he
hears the constellations far above the oak
stamping in their stalls.

[Alina Cristea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A refreshing anthology of Tomas Tranströmer's poetry, selected and translated by his friend and collaborator Robert Bly. A wonderful discovery. I look forward to reading their correspondence throughout the years ("Airmail: The Letters of Robery Bly and Tomas Tranströmer") and to learn a little more about them and their thoughts.

[Víctor Bermúdez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Snow-Melting Time, ’66


Massive waters fall, water-roar, the old hypnosis.
Water has risen into the car-graveyard—it glitters
behind the masks.
I hold tight to the narrow bridge.
I am on a large iron bird sailing past death.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Need. More. Tranströmer.

[Malva Dovander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolut den bästa av de samlingar jag läst av Tranströmer. Så otroligt vackra! Älskar naturdikterna.

Ett träds lugna steg””””.”…,,,,,,,

[Ray Nessly · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the helpful introduction by Robert Bly, who also translated these poems: "Tomas Transtomer has a strange genius for the image; … The wide space we feel in his poems perhaps occurs because the four or five main images in each poem come from widely separated sources in the psyche. His poems are a sort of railway station where trains that have come enormous distances stand briefly in the same building. One train may have some Russian snow on the undercarriage, and another may have Mediterranean flowers fresh in the compartments, and Ruhr soot on the roofs. The poems are mysterious because the images have traveled a long way to get there."
I love the train station comparison. Sometimes these images come in flurries, and form a collage. But as Bly notes in his Paris Review interview ("The Art of Poetry no. 79"), Transtromer's poems aren't "French surrealism, whose images don't have a center. They're like a wheel without any spokes."
That explanation makes sense to me. And though I don't expect poetry to always be "understood", I do have to say that the centers of these poems were revealed to me rather less often than I would have liked. (As they say, "Maybe it's just me.")
A note on translations: You can't help but notice the alliteration in the second stanza, last sentence, of "Black Postcards":

Halfway through your life, death turns up/and takes your pertinent measurements. We forget/
the visit. Life goes on. But someone is sewing the suit in the silence.

I looked for, and failed to find, the poem on-line in the original Swedish. I figured there had to be a similar repetition in the original, and I wanted to know what it sounded like. I did find three other translations, somewhat different, and all three repeated the "s" to varying degrees.
1) But the suit is sewn in silence.
2) But the suit is being sewn on the sly.
3) But the suit is being sewn on the quiet.
It's important to read other translations if possible, because often one translator's vision may resonate with you stronger than others. For example, one of my favorite poems is Neruda's "In Praise of Ironing." I can only bear to see the translation I first encountered, by Alistair Reid decades ago, that I've all but memorized. Subsequent translations all sound "wrong" to me.

Example of a favorite from this collection, image-packed, which really resonated, especially the last stanza:

Once there was a shock/that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail. /It keeps us inside. /It makes the TV pictures snowy. It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.
One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun/ through brush where a leaves hang on.
/ They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories. /Names swallowed by the cold.
It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat/ but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant/ beside his armor of black dragon scales.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book of poetry several years ago and enjoyed it, so I decided to read it again. I was, for a time, trying to post reviews of the poetry books I've finished but stopped a couple of months ago because I found I really didn't know what to say about them. I have to admit I'm very unsophisticated and don't know the proper terminology to describe poetry and so stopped trying, but I've been convinced to try anyway. So, I think I will just quote a favorite poem from the collection. So, the following is titled The Couple.

They turn the light off, and its white globe glows
an instant and then dissolves, like a tablet
in a glass of darkness. Then a rising.
The hotel walls shoot up into heaven's darkness.

Their movements have grown softer, and they sleep,
but their most secret thoughts begin to meet
like two colors that meet and run together
on the wet paper in a schoolboy's painting

It is dark and silent. The city however has come nearer
tonight. With its windows turned off. Houses have come.
They stand packed and waiting very near,
a mob of people with blank faces.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Came by his work while viewing the last episode of Wallander. The show opens with Kenneth Branagh reading, The Half-Finished Heaven. The next day I had a copy from the library of this collection, edited and translated by Robert Bly. I read it start to finish and ended with Mr. Bly's prologue.

It is like walking through a midieval city that has not lost its charm or poignancy by way of modernization. I loved how his sometimes stark, familiar language moved me along emotionally into a new territory of images and ideas-afresh and unsentimental.

[Edward Rathke · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this short selection of his poetry, I can see why he's a Nobel Laureate.

It's incredibly beautiful what he does throughout his career. He's rather inventive, too, sticking to no singular style but every poem remains very much him.

There's a gentleness, a sort of nostalgic longing, as well as that beauty found in impermanence.

Truly, some beautiful poems within.

Highly recommended.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tranströmer’s poetry is amazing, and this book was a great introduction to it. I was looking for poetry where the “I” didn’t take center stage, and quite by chance, I found it here. Nature, and even technological objects, are the focus in Tranströmer’s poetry. I would say his writing is about the world of things, and the human voice is almost an after-effect, a result of what things do. The images are surprising, and nature and technology merge in unexpected ways.

[Patti K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume of selected poems are from an earlier stage in Transtromer's
long career. The work here is nearly astounding with its silences and
nuanced wisdoms. Forthright yet magical at times, they each take the\
reader to another country or state of mind. Highly recommend.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

From March '79

Being tired of people who come with words, but no speech,
I made my way to the snow-covered island.
The wild does not have words.
The pages free of handwriting stretched out on all sides!
I came upon the tracks of reindeer in the snow.
Speech but no words.

[Philippe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A faithful traveling companion, this light and compact volume. Never fails to reinforce resonances of heart and mind when rambling over peaks and vales. Bly’s translations strike me as very idiomatic. Thank you Tomas, Robert and Penguin.

[Dave H · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first encounter with Tranströmer. Solid. One of the best, may be the best, of the latter half of the 20th century. May be one of the great poets. If you read much poetry, a must read.

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

These were, admittedly, not 100% to my taste: I really like pastoral poetry under certain conditions ("did the author probably die of syphilis or fighting Cromwell or is he using this as a way to get someone into bed?") or when the "pastoral" part is kind of abstract ("Meditation at Lagunitas") or it's creepy - and Tranströmer's pastoral is a little bit too straightforward for me. But these are sharp poems, all the same. They are specific, too: Tranströmer's pastoral context and his "civilized" world are both definitely Swedish - if he steps outside, he lets you know. I appreciate that, in a poet, as much as I like cerebral and/or abstract poetry, I welcome reminders that the poet is coming from a totally different perspective than I am.

I'm a little bit unsure what to do with his use of African motifs, though - they never quite made sense to me. (They did make me slightly squirmy.) I think this is a collection that rewards revisiting, however, so maybe someone more dedicated than I am will figure it out.

"Schubertiana" and "Romanesque Arches" were perhaps my favorites here. I like it when the concrete motivates the cerebral.

[Mattea Gernentz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found at McKAY's. I find it quietly beautiful that this is the only poem dog-eared by the past reader:

"C Major

As he stepped out into the street after a meeting with her
the snow whirled in the air.
Winter had come
while they were making love.
The night was white.
He walked fast from joy.
The streets slanted down.
Smiles passed—
everyone smiled behind turned-up collars.
How free it all was!
And all the question marks started to sing about God's life.
That's how it seemed to him..."

***

I can tell that Tranströmer has immense ability, but I simply don't think we are on the same wavelength in this season of my life. His emptiness was more emptiness than openness for me. Still, a few poems were dazzling, with unforgettable images like "I am carried inside / my own shadow like a violin / in its black case." I am glad that I read this collection, but it won't linger on my shelf.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tranströmer's third collection begins with poems reminiscent of his earliest, more abstract work, but soon shifts to the stark Expressionism of his previous collection. His diction is deceptively simply, with the crux of his meaning just beneath the surface. I can't claim that he leaves his meaning “unsaid,” because he sometimes states it plainly, but without any ornamentation that might call attention to it. A few of the middle poems read like German Romanticism (think Hölderlin, but without the yearning to connect with the gods). Tranströmer's yearning, if it may be called that, is to connect to a greater sense of stability in a turbulent world -- both within the Self and through shared experiences with others in the natural world.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Tourists have crowded into the half-dark of the enormous
Romanesque church.
Vault opening behind vault and no perspective.
A few candle flames flickered.
An angel whose face I couldn’t see embraced me
and his whisper went all through my body:
“Don’t be ashamed to be a human being, be proud!
Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly.
You’ll never be complete, and that’s as it should be.”
Tears blinded me
as we were herded out into the fiercely sunlit piazza,
together with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Herr Tanaka and Signora
Sabatini;
within each of them vault after vault opened endlessly."

-- "Romanesque Arches"

[Jip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zo beeldend <3 Echt mooi.

Mijn favoriet was ‘At Funchal (Island of Madeira)’. Een stukje daaruit:

We gain strength from them, but also from ourselves. From what is inside that the other person can’t see. That which can only meet itself. The innermost paradox, the underground garage flowers, the vent toward the good dark. A drink that bubbles in an empty glass. An amplifier that magnifies silence. A path that grows over after every step. A book thay can only be read in the dark.

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nobel Prize in Literature 2011.

“I am carried inside
my own shadow like a violin
in its black case.”

Tomas Tranströmer was a psychologist as well as a musician and this can be felt in his poems. Several instruments and composers are present, but also the depths of the psyche. His poems are accessible and this translation is excellent.

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a field not far from the subdivisions
a newspaper has been lying for months, full of news.
It is aging because of days and nights, rain and sun.
It's on its way to becoming a plant, a cabbage head. It's starting to join the field,
like an old memory gradually changing into you.

[Mike Prewitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a poetry fan but I found this to be very interesting. My favorite poem in here is The Bookshelf it had a nostalgic feel. So I might find more poetry (especially horror or Poe).