The Half-Finished Heaven

Despondency breaks off its course.
Anguish breaks off its course.
The vulture breaks off its flight.

The eager light streams out,
even the ghosts take a draught.

And our paintings see daylight,
our red beasts of the ice-age studios.

Everything begins to look around.
We walk in the sun in hundreds.

Each man is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.

The endless ground under us.

The water is shining among the trees.

The lake is a window into the earth.

From Tomas Tranströmer, New Collected Poems, translated by Robin Fulton (Bloodaxe Books, 1997/2011)
http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/

This is the poem that I read at my mother's funeral because I could not offer a conventional kind of eulogy. It will have different meanings for different readers. This is what it means to me and why I read it for my mother.

 

'We walk in the sun in hundreds' but millions remain in the shade of poverty.

'Each man is a half-open door leading to a room for everyone' except that loneliness affects millions. Social isolation and social fragmentation are causing significant rises in anxiety and depression.

It is a 'half-finished heaven'. Capitalism has enabled many to 'walk in the sun' but its primary focus on profit, exploitation and competition has seeped, intentionally and manipulatively, into the human psyche.

When we can truly begin to care about one another then there will be 'a room for everyone'.

We have arrived at a time of immense possibility. But 'the vulture must break off its flight'. 

 

My mother despite her inability to let herself truly love and be loved, did have much to offer. One true thing that she did understand and she did try to express in the way she lived was that no person is above another.