solitude

.

I was nearly killed here, one night in February.
My car shivered, and slewed sideways on the ice,
right across into the other lane. The slur of traffic
came at me with their lights.

My name, my girls, my job, all

slipped free and were left behind, smaller and smaller,

further and further away. I was a nobody:

a boy in a playground, suddenly surrounded.

The headlights of the oncoming cars

bore down on me as I wrestled the wheel through a slick

of terror, clear and slippery as egg-white.

The seconds grew and grew – making more room for me –

stretching huge as hospitals.

I almost felt that I could rest

and take a breath

before the crash.

Then something caught: some helpful sand

or a well-timed gust of wind. The car

snapped out of it, swinging back across the road.

A signpost shot up and cracked, with a sharp clang,

spinning away in the darkness.

And it was still. I sat back in my seat-belt

and watched someone tramp through the whirling snow

to see what was left of me.

–Tomas Tranströmer

.

 Osamo Komatsu

.