according to Buddha

When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky

“The Prelude” – Tomas Tranströmer

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?

(Translation of “Preludium.” First published in 17 Dikter (Stockholm, 1954). By arrangement with the author. Translation copyright 2007 by Rika Lesser. All rights reserved.)

photo from Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam

appreciating and congratulating  Tomas Tranströmer