Tracks - Tomas Tranströmer

Tracks 
Tomas Tranströmer
(Translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly)

Night, two o’clock: moonlight. The train has stopped
in the middle of the plain. Distant bright points of a town
twinkle cold on the horizon.

As when someone has gone into a dream so far
that he’ll never remember he was there
when he comes back to his room.

And as when someone goes into a sickness so deep
that all his former days become twinkling points, a swarm,
cold and feeble on the horizon.

The train stands perfectly still.
Two o’clock: full moonlight, few stars.

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Wow. This poem captures the essence of a single moment. We do not know why this event is important, and yet the power of the event comes across to us in two seemingly simple metaphors. Poetry doesn't need to be complicated to contain and convey truth. Every time I read this poem, I can feel myself there on the train and I believe the strangeness of it like a dream as well as the timelessness.

While keeping this poem in mind, it's messages and techniques, here are some prompts that you may use to write a poem:

1. Find a single moment in your life that is meaningful to you and use two short metaphors to try to explain to us, the reader, why the moment was important.
2. This poem contains two metaphors that are seemingly contradictory (the ephemeral qualities of a dream mixed with the eternal qualities of a sickness), yet work together to accurately explain an experience. Find two qualities that are seemingly contradictory and find metaphors for them. Then, use those metaphors to talk about a single experience or moment.
3. Take a line from this poem and use this in your poem (a title, a first line, or other). Write.
4. What else does this poem remind you of or inspire in you? Write.