Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Convirtiéndose en characoteles / Sorcerers Changing into Their Animal Forms (detail), 2013, oil on canvas. Arte Maya Tz’utujil Collection.
Landscape with Suns
The sun emerges from behind the house
stands in the middle of the street
and breathes on us
with its red wind.
Innsbrck I must leave you.
But tomorrow there will be a glowing sun
in the grey, half-dead forest
where we must work and live.
Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) was born in Stockholm. In 2011 he won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. A translator, psychologist, entomologist, and classical pianist, Tranströmer has become the most influential and revered Swedish poet of his generation. His many poetry collections have appeared in hundreds of editions in over sixty languages.
Michael McGriff is a former Michener Fellow at the University of Texas and a current Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. His translation of Tomas Tranströmer’s The Sorrow Gondola is forthcoming from Green Integer Books in 2008. His poems and translations have recently appeared in Poetry, AGNI, Crazyhorse, FIELD, and Northwest Review. (updated 2007)
Mikaela Grassl was born and raised in Sunne, Sweden. She is a graduate of the Torsby Ski Academy (Sweden) and is currently a member if the University of Utah Alpine Ski Team. She is a degree candidate at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.