Airmail (25 page)

Related to that error is her habit of using “seek” instead of “look for,” “pallid” instead of the simple “pale.” It’s the same habit turning up in nouns. (By the way, in the last stanza of this poem: are those “de ihjalfrusnas” the ones who have
been
already frozen to death, or are they the ones who are freezing
others
to death? May has it the second way.) (In her English, the music seems to be coming from extremely ominous types, sort of living refrigerators walking about the far north.)

“Evening-Morning”: this one is better. “Drinkenly” doesn’t exist—she means drunkenly. Several problems: “charred” means the bruggan has been
burned.
It doesn’t
look
like coal, but is ruined. If you want that, it’s OK. “Brushwood” implies dead twigs and branches, such as would be gathered for a fire. As I understand it, you really mean just the living bushes etc near the water.

“Slams” doesn’t have as much movement back and forth as “slar.” Instead of movement that is
seen,
we basically
hear
the sound of a door slamming, as when one person is mad at another. “Flashes” is not quite “sprakar”: flashes is rather mechanical, and implies a light that flashes on and off every few seconds.

But I think this one is not bad, and with a little work, will be OK.

I think I’d better stop. Write when you can escape from your war duties, and preparations for Ragnarok.
Newsweek
reported this week that the Swedish army has issued hairnets to its soldiers, so I figure the last days are approaching.

Love to you all from all of us, especially our new Gemini baby!

Robert

4-6-71

Dear Robert, I am writing this hiding behind the army equipment. Up to now I have only fired 4 bullets in this war, but it is a constant hurry and confusion. In the night I lie in my sleeping bag like a frozen sausage in its plastic cover, in the day I am grilled. That will last 8 more days, then I am free again, eating at tables, playing the piano, reading books, translating mad poems about Hawaiian crabs, patting my children etc. Most unreal. It is difficult to say something intelligent. But writing to you like this is helping me to hold on to my identity.—I got a long letter from George Young (in Hanover, N.H.). He is going to Finland this summer (these frequent voyages from the U.S.A. to Finland are a mystery, somebody should make an investigation). He is working for the idea to make a president of Ralph Nader. What a strange American idea! Ralph Nader is too good, and has too little stomach-mentality to be a president. And if he was elected he would be assassinated very soon. A wonderful target for solitary madmen or big oil company conspirators. Let him live. I want everyone to live and be happy. And go fishing. And listen to Scriabin. And visit Byelo-Russia. And fill his pipe with sunrise. Goodnight mankind. Goodnight arriving new family member in the Bly house. Goodnight Robert and Carol and the girls and Noah. Goodnight.

Tomas

[June 71]

Love to little

from his godparents.

Monica dreamt the other night that she (as nurse) was called to a woman to help her deliver a child. When she looked into the womb of that woman she found a deep, wide tunnel where a little boy was sitting, serious, waiting. He seemed to be between 6 months and 1 year old. Monica lifted him out but it was impossible to do the usual things you do with newborn babies with him—he seemed too grown-up. He had a very clever look. When she woke up her first association was with your new baby. Congratulations from all parts of us: ego, superego and id.

The other evening I was presented with a SCROLL and a MEDAL in Stockholm. Monica and I borrowed money from friends to get to Stockholm, dressed in clothes from my old well-paid Roxtuna days and mixed with the rich in a restaurant. Representatives from Pittsburgh are doing a visit in Europe this summer to study cultural policy and they wanted to make a big celebration of the Pitt prize. I had forbidden the presence of official people (from the U.S. Embassy and the Swedish Foreign department) so it was a completely private thing, only some people from the Swedish Institute, the rich, Monica and I. Many speeches. Mr Hazo looked extremely exotic and magnificent. The rich were nice and got a sudden affection for Monica so she was invited too to Pittsburgh! The agreement details I shall discuss with Mr Hazo on Sunday—it is now very favorable.

In these days the Writer’s Foundation is determining if I get the autumn voyage or not. I will probably have a “yes” from them. I have asked for a ticket from Stockholm to Los Angeles and back plus some financial support for the family during my 3 weeks’ stay in the U.S. I will let you know at once when I get the definite answer from them. I want to go in the middle of October. You will hear from me very soon.

Love

    Tomas

P.S. From now on my address is Gatan
13038 Runmarö.

22 July, ’71

Dear Tomas,

Forgive me for being so slow to answer.

My brother was killed in a car accident not far from his farm about three weeks ago. I have lost most of my energy, and can’t seem to get anything done. All I want to do is to be with my children, and I waste day after day.

His two older girls were in high school and out of it, but he left a boy 14 and a girl about 8. The boy did nothing but sob for three days straight—in farming, a man and his son tend to be very close. I don’t know what I can do now, if I can be of any use at all. We were never close intellectually at all, and I suspect his widow considers me as his “opposite,” and will always be suspicious of me.

Our new little boy, Micah, is fine. Carol sends her love.

I like your National Guard Camp poem. I’ve translated the first two stanzas today with Mary—and she has already memorized them.

A porgy is a saltwater fish, which we often found in fish markets in England—
Pagrus pagrus,
sometimes called “scup” in English too. Several varieties are loosely called “porgy.” It’s a small, affectionate, non-threatening fish.

   Love from us all

to you and Monica and

Emma and Paula

      Robert

27 July, ’71

Dear Tomas,

You’re right—this is the first good translation the Mormon feminist has made. I’ve made a few minor suggestions—don’t tell her they come from me! I’ll be the invisible advisor, communicating to you as Madame Blavatsky’s advisors used to, from “somewhere in the hidden Himalayas.” They are said to have been living for four hundred years “in caves on the slopes of Tibet,” etc.

I like your translations of “Spiritual Death” and “The Sleeping Woman”! And I’m pleased that you liked them! With the word “loggolve”—threshing floor—the reader should pick up the feeling of the threshing floors in the Old Testament, such as the one Ruth slept on or a threshing floor where Tammuz or Adonis dances would be held in Mesopotamia. The poem has a modern feeling in English, except for that line, which suggests Mesopotamia, and the last line, which suggests a Middle Ages witch in a fairy tale woods...

(And I think it’s true psychologically, that if a man dies, spiritually, his wife will then—almost as if by natural process—become a witch.) (I thought I’d praise my own poem!)

The word “acquarious” in “The Sleeping Woman” is almost a pun, since it simple means the water is watery, but its liquid syllables do help the water to flow along...“Akvarieaktigt” may have an oversurplus of consonants—I can’t tell. It might be possible to use a word connected with the astrological sign Aquarius, since that was also drifting through my water-longing head.

I’m going to try your Snowmelt poem—the
Times Literary Supplement
writes me that it wants some poems of yours for an issue this September—but you’ll have to help me with the last line. Is the bird sailing past death or the dead or the
grave
?

Each will produce a different mood in English. Also, is the bird flapping, or floating on extended wings? Is he an eagle, a crow, a mythical Persian bird, or just a bird? “Fugel” has such a lovely open sound in Swedish. I see why you all use it so often. But it doesn’t help with color!

A friend in N.Y. sent me this clipping from the
N.Y. Times
of last Monday. I certainly dislike the idea of adding an “e” to all Swedes’ names! It’s like adding water to milk. [My name is mentioned, and Lars is evidently meaning to insult me, but I couldn’t tell for sure. (Did you see the
Time
magazine article on American poetry in mid-July? Look at it! It’s wonderful.)] I see you’ve been laying the groundwork for a new golden age with metaphors sharp as needles. This is dangerous work! Always wear gloves.

Your friend,

Robert

Västerås 4-8-71

Dear Robert,

good to hear from you again, but the news about your brother and his family made me very sad. The catastrophes with cars are the modern equivalent to smallpox, almost every family has some victim. About the same day as you lost your brother, a woman was killed in a crash in Yugoslavia, a woman I had been very close to in 1954–55. (She was killed the 7th or 8th of July.)

xxxx

About “loggolvet.” It is a Swedish word with a lot of old peasant life aroma. It is not biblical, just old, simple, rural. I looked in the Book of Ruth to see what the Swedish Bible has for the place where Ruth was lying. It gave “tröskplatsen,” a hopeless word without biblical quality.

xxxx

Lars Gustafsson’s presentation of Swedish poetry looks exactly like a chapter from one of these books about Sweden, written by mildly interested and informed Anglo-Saxons who have some fixed idea. Interesting to see how writing in a foreign language can change the outlook. As for you, it was probably meant to be the highest possible prize—you are compared to Enzensberger, Lars’s hero. I must go to the library and ask for the
Time
issue. I will write when I have seen it.

All good things for the Blys and their numerous children.

Tomas

August 15 [1971]

Västerås

Dear Robert,

a black day. I just left my TV after having seen our discus-thrower Ricky Bruch make a fool of himself and all Swedes in the olympic stadium of Helsinki, where the european athletic competitions are performed. This fool, Bruch, a human broiler, stuffed with hormone pills and talking like Cassius Clay, did not throw his damned discus longer than 59 meters—in small unimportant competitions he usually throws it 66–68 meters. He is nr 2 in the world in his art (only Jay Silvester is better) but as soon as it comes to important, international games he loses his nerves completely and the whole nation cries.

[------]

In the competition for fools I think I will give the palm of victory to the author of the
Time
article about U.S. poetry. I found it at last in the library. I suppose this presentation falls into the category of “middle class thinking” and it is always wonderful to see almost perfect expressions of such things.
Time
probably thinks that it has done a good service to poetry by giving “publicity.” Anyhow, I feel very safe, knowing that I am patronized by an authorized polemical roarer, when I come over to Your country in October.

Talking of roaring: I think the liberties You took in translating “Snow Melting Time” will help the poem survive in English. So I like your solution. The
Times Literary Supplement
is an improbable place to appear in. Do You really say they wrote you and ASKED for a translation? Of course I agree to it.

Tomorrow George Young from N.H. will visit me, I just talked to him by the telephone. I heard at once from his voice that he is no fool. So I look forward to seeing him.

Love from us all. Write soon!

Your friend

Tomas

About the snow-melt poem...It is a small thing only, but the snow-melting of 1966 was big—it had been such a long and hard winter and all of a sudden it was summer, water overflowing.

Tumbling tumbling water, roar, old hypnosis...The Swedish word “störtande” has more water in it...it is a current, perhaps a cataract. You are on the bridge. Further away a churchyard for old, dead cars. The water is overflowing it too, glittering behind the empty shells of the cars (also, perhaps overflowing human beings, glittering behind
their
masks—e.g., the faces...). I am standing on the bridge, in a slight dizziness. Gripping the bridge parapet. The bridge is like a large bird of iron sailing past death. “Segla” in Swedish is a calm word, no flapping. The type of bird: albatross. But larger. And of Iron. Sailing past death.