Tomas Tranströmer

I carry inside myself my earlier faces, as a tree contains its rings.

I wrote so meagerly to you. But what I couldn't write swelled and swelled like an old-fashioned airship and drifted away at last through the night sky.

It is still beautiful to hear the heart beatbut often the shadow seems more real than the body.

No one decides where I go, least of all myself, though each step is where it must be.

In the middle of life, death comesto take your measurements. The visitis forgotten and life goes on. But the suitis being sewn on the sly.

Death stoops over me.I'm a problem in chess. Hehas the solution.