The Couple

They turn the light off, and its white globe glows

an instant and then dissolves, like a tablet

in a glass of darkness. Then a rising.

The hotel walls shoot up into heaven’s darkness.

Their movements have grown softer, and they sleep,

but their most secret thoughts begin to meet

like two colors that meet and run together

on the wet paper in a schoolboy’s painting.

It is dark and silent. The city however has come nearer

tonight. With its windows turned off. Houses have come.

They stand packed and waiting very near,

a mob of people with blank faces.

~Tomas Tranströmer (Translated by Robert Bly)