Poem: “Romanesque Arches”

By Tomas Tranströmer

Tourists have crowded into the halfdark 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” translated by Robert Bly, from The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer. Copyright © 2001 by Tomas  Tranströmer. Translation copyright © 2001 by Robert Bly. Reprinted with the permission of  The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, MN.,  http://www.graywolfpress.org.