spring!

Daffodils, oil/canvas

This painting, which is quite large, has become apart from me; I cannot remember my imprints upon it.  Still, exuberant, with joy it is; "It takes my place" here!  

Here is a wonderful poem, a paean of spring, by Tomas Transtromer, Morning Birds .

The translation is by Gunnar Harding and Frederic Will.  Such ordinary-seeming views: this poem takes my breath away.

I wake my car.

Its windshield is covered with pollen.

I put on my sunglasses

and the song of the birds darkens.

While another man buys a newspaper

in the railroad station

near a large freight car

which is entirely red with rust

and stands flickering in the sun.

No emptiness anywhere here.

Straight across the spring warmth a cold corridor

where someone comes hurrying

to say that they are slandering him

all the way up to the Director.

Through a back door in the landscape comes the magpie

black and white, Hel's bird.

And the blackbird moving crisscross

until everything becomes a charcoal drawing,

except for the white sheets on the clothesline:

a Palestrina choir.

No emptiness anywhere here.

Fantastic to feel how my poem grows

while I myself shrink.

It is growing, it takes my place.

It pushes me out of its way.

It throws me out of the nest.