March 26th, 2015
Do you know why it is gray today? I'm sure you can feel the chilly vagueness in the air. I should let you know a poet died today. Tho that is not why I have chosen to stain today with inky shapes that hold nothing for you, like the dry gray sky that won't rain. It has run out of rain and words. Liquid is life, there's a dry eye in the sky.
I'm sure for the record there is some concrete statistic which scientifically, methodically, and reasonably has extrapolated a figure denoting that a poet dies every hour, or Red, Blue, Harvest, or maybe just on the New Moon.
Surely one is born every full moon.
You may also like to know, the poets are not an endangered species, at least geographically where you and I dwell, others in places and time may not have fared so well for poetry's sake.
Poets are actually quite common, like the common Mimus polygottos, who blend in and adapt, tweaking their song and the species evolves along.
I re-tweeted the news of the death, needless to say anyway.
Another member elected into the Dead Poets Society, his name was Tomas Tranströmer, did you know him? Hear his song? Pick up a poem? Peruse his prose? I am sorry for our loss.
I just met him myself and yet he spoke to me as if we'd met before, maybe it was on the other (side of the) page.
I heard his name was swallowed by the cold empty record book. Out of sight now, recorded so we won't remember, as though we were never there too, until his name is found dusty again.
But the thoughts of a poet, as vaporous as they seem, have actually scratched the surface and etched the glass, permanently altering clarity-for a bit.
And now we know the fate of a Poet, what happens to his now homeless accolades? They can endure, choosing to evolve.
Now a reply was never sent to your open letter that floats among the continents in 60 different languages-do they all speak poetry?
Melancholy you may think-maybe-it's in-between.
I saw my reflection pouring over your letter in an office building window walking by this afternoon and there it was-stopping me in my tracks. A capital "T"!
It was crowded on the street and people were going about their day talking on or eyes glued to their cellular world, so nobody noticed what you'd given just to me, and it fit perfectly!
Sending my gratitude.
I will write again soon.
Tomas Gösta Tranströmer was a poet, psychologist and translator of Sweden born April 15th, 1931 and passed away March 26th 2015. The above piece was composed in response to his Prose titled "Reply to a Letter".
Image of painting by Louis-Robert de Cuvillon, 1886 "Renaissance Woman reading a letter" [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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