Poetry

 

Have you seen a tramp collier ...

Have you seen a tramp collier come out of a hurricane—
with broken booms, gunwales shot to pieces,
crumpled, gasping, come to grief—
and her captain gone all hoarse?
Snorting, she puts in at the sunlit wharf,
exhausted, licking her wounds
while the steam thins in her boilers.

 

By Harry Martinson
From Spökskepp, 1929
Translated by Stephen Klass

Published with the permission of Eva Martinson