I was reading The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems, by Tomas Tranströmer, when my wife told me Wednesday evening about the collapse of the bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. I sent e-mails to friends in Minnesota, hoping all was well, and thought of John Berryman jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi, on the University of Minnesota campus, on Jan 7, 1972. Two days earlier, Berryman had written a poem and thrown it into a waste basket, where it was found after his death. Here’s the first verse:
“I didn’t. And I didn’t. Sharp the Spanish blade
to gash my throat after I’d climbed across
the high railing of the bridge
to tilt out, with the knife in my right hand
to slash me knocked or fainting till I’d fall
unable to keep my skull down but fearless”
I remembered the collapse of the Schoharie Creek Bridge along the New York State Thruway on April 5, 1987, a Sunday morning. I was a newspaper reporter in Albany, N.Y., and was called to work on my day off. About 40 miles west of Albany, two spans had dropped into the flood-swollen creek. Five vehicles fell into the water and ten people died. Only nine bodies were recovered. As I recall, the Schoharie flows into the Mohawk River, which flows into the Hudson, and bodies were found miles from the scene. Every time I drove over that stretch of Thruway, once the span was replaced, I thought of those people, on a Sunday morning early in spring, abruptly falling through the air, some to be pushed for miles by the current. In a 1926 letter to Otto H. Kahn, Hart Crane said his great poem The Bridge was “based on the conquest of space and knowledge,” which sound more like the words of an engineer than a poet.
Here’s one of the Tranströmer poems, “Snow is Falling,” I was reading Wednesday. It was translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton:
“The funerals keep coming
more and more of them
like the traffic signs
as we approach a city.
“Thousands of people gazing
in the land of long shadows.
“A bridge builds itself
slowly
straight out in space.”
1 comment:
I've been enjoying reading your blog for several months. It's lovely to see the Transtroemer - he's a favorite of mine - he can always be counted on for deep reflection in challenging times. Do you know "Dream Seminar" or "The Gallery?" I love those too and have posted him over at my place.
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