The Name

(Found here)

I got sleepy while driving and pulled in under a tree at the side of the

road. Rolled up in the backseat and went to sleep. How long? Hours.

Darkness had come.

    All of a sudden I was awake, and didn’t know who I was. I’m fully

conscious, but that doesn’t help. Where am I? WHO am I? I am something

that has just woken up in a backseat, throwing itself around in panic like

a cat in a gunnysack. Who am I?

    After a long while my life comes back to me. My name comes to me

like an angel. Outside the castle walls there is a trumpet blast (as in the

Leonore Overture) and the footsteps that will save me come quickly

down the long staircase. It’s me coming! It’s me!

    But it is impossible to forget the fifteen-second battle in the hell of

nothingness, a few feet from a major highway where the cars slip past

with their lights on.

~Tomas Tranströmer (Translated by Robert Bly)