Tranströmer på engelska

Citoyens

 

The night after the accident I dreamed of a pock-marked man,
Wandering in the alleys, singing.
Danton!
Not the other one - Robespierre never strolls about like that.
Every morning Robespierre powders, preens, washes himself, painstakingly and for an hour,
The rest of the day is dedicated to the People.
In the paradise of pampleths, among the machines of virtue.
Danton-
or whoever wore his mask-
stood as if he was standing on stilts.
I saw his face from below:
scarred and moon-shaped,
half of it light, half of it dark.
I wanted to speak.
My chest is heavy, the plumb
that sets the clocks going,
hands twisting: year one. Year two.
An acrid smell of sawdust.
And, as always in my dreams, no sun.
But the very walls shone,
lit up the alleys curling
down to the waiting room, the curved room,
the waiting room where we all…