Robert Hass and a Poem by Tomas Transtromer

Now And Then: The Poet's Choice Columns 1997-2000 (Shoemaker and Hoard, 2007) by Robert Hass, includes a discussion of a poem by Tomas Transtromer for November 29, 1998 (page 111). Robert Hass had been to Shanghai, where "The main experience of Shanghai...like the main experience of New York, is the sheer mass of people on the teeming streets..." The poem by Tomas Transtromer, "Streets in Shanghai", immediately came to mind for Haas:

Behind each one walking here moves a cross that wants to catch up to us, pass us, join us...

The cross in this line is the subject of Robert Hass last paragraph - "One wants to know what that cross is in Swedish and what its resonances are..." The word wants used both by Transtromer and Hass expresses layers of want. One layer is that ambiguity is a kind of aesthetic happiness. To want to know is a joy in itself. This is one part of Hass meditative column about Tomas Transtromer. Another layer is the desire to see the poem printed in original Swedish side by side with the translation - a desire supported by small press.

With the internet we assume answers can happen on the text. This changes the experience of ambiguity for writers.