FROM MARCH 1979

Sick of those who come with words, words but no language,
I make my way to the snow-covered island.

Wilderness has no words. The unwritten pages
stretch out in all directions.

I come across this line of deer-slots in the snow: a language,
language without words.

—Translated by Robin Robertson

After graduating in psychology, he worked in a young offenders’ institute in Linkoping. He worked great part of his life with juvenile delinquents, convicts, drug addicts and the physically handicapped of Sweden Social Democratic system.

” Transtromer’s is a poetry of sharp contrast and duality – a double world of dark and light, inside and outside, dreaming and waking, man and machine, stillness and turmoil – and he is fascinated by the pressure between the world we know and the hidden world we cannot deny.”

Robin Robertson