February 26: In My Marrow, Tomas Tranströmer, "The Nightingale in Badelunda"

It has been quite the day.  For the past couple weeks, every night, I come home, exhausted in my marrow.  The poem below, for some reason, comforts me.  The nightingale visiting the imprisoned and afflicted.

Saint Marty needs a very long nap.  And maybe a beer.

The Nightingale in Badelunda

by:  Tomas Tranströmer

In the green midnight at the nightingale's northern limit.  Heavy leaves hang in trance, the deaf cars race towards the neon-line.  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 voice, the raw resonant notes that whet the night sky's gleaming scythe.