THE STROKE OF ONE

2011 Nobel Laureate Tomas Tranströmer - 1990

I woke that spring morning

happy to hear birdsong

but disconcerted:

the long shadow of a headache

stretched as far as I could see.

Beyond the woods

beyond words

a wintry sun was setting.

These dissonant things –

spring and winter,

sunrise and sunset,

song and pain –

were omens of cold chaos.

In a flash my spirit

was caught like a fish in a net,

my flesh pulled and spun

through an unfamiliar deep.

.

I awoke three days later –

Jonah on an alien shore –

unable to speak:

half my body was an exhausted traveller

heaving the other half,

an inert brother,

over one shoulder

searching for a door

among splintered forests

polluted streams and rivers

in the war-torn country

of my mind.

In weeks scarce words

returned in a haiku, thus:

So my thoughts struggle.

My ideas suffocate

my Hiroshima.

Then, sufficient for a short paragraph of prose,

after months, staccato conversation,

two years and the piano,

left hand only.

Sonatinas, ostinati.

My dear, dear Fibich and Mompou…

I fear this resurrection of the body:

raised in the image

of a left-sided hemi-god.

‘For in the twinkling of an eye

we shall all be changed…’

and I was.

                  ………………

Three weeks after my event

Sravanthi, a young poet

studying with me,

brought me a stone

the size of a pigeon’s egg –

polished, heavy, ferrous –

a fragment of a meteorite:

uncurling my fingers

she nestled it in my palm.

‘As your hand warms it,’ Sravanthi said,

‘at the stroke of one each day

for two hours its power will flow

along your meridians to your soul.’

A word was inscribed

upon it in Sanskrit:

Akhanda – whole.

When later I could feel

and roll Sravanthi’s gift

images came to me –

of summer sunlight filtered

through tall trees,

green pastures,

Manhattan sky-scapes

and grand canyons of its avenues:

I hesitated beside still waters.

With time I learned the lavish comfort

of the soul for mind and body.

As my soul healed I found

it shared its strength

to urge me back

and haltingly I followed.