Madrigal, by TOMAS TRANSTROMER

I inherited a dark forest where I seldom walk. But a day is coming when the living and the dead change places. Then the forest starts moving. We aren’t without hope. The worst crime remains unsolved despite the efforts of many police. In the same way there is a great unsolved love in our lives. I inherited a dark forest, but today I am walking in the other forest, the light one. And the living things that sing, wiggle, wave and crawl! It’s spring and the air is very strong. I have an examination at the University of Forgetfullness and am as emptyhanded as the shirt on the clothesline.

From “For the Living and the Dead” by Tomas Transtromer. (The Ecco Press: $22; 71 pp.) Transtromer was born in Stockholm in 1931. Since 1967 he has worked with the occupationally handicapped in Vasteras, 40 miles west of Stockholm, where he lives. Copyright 1995 Reprinted by permission.