Kozhikode Nightingale
The navy blue dawn outside my chamber. Water slithers down wet leaves. The cicadas hum in trance. The nightingale’s voice rises without wavering to the side, it is as penetrating as a cock-crow, but beautiful and free of vanity. I was in prison and it visited me. I was sick and it visited me. I didn’t notice it then, but I do now. Time streams down from the sun and the moon and into all the tick-tock-thankful clocks. But right here there is no time. Only the nightingale’s succulent voice, the raw resonant notes that whet the waking sky’s gleaming hued scythe.
From Tomas Tranströmer of Sweden
