The Boat in the Evening by Tarjei Vesaas

through,
    time was up.
    Too late to reach them,
    too late to hold anything back.
    Too late. What had been wrong?
    Pointless groping.
    The sunshades rustled, but uselessly.
    The stampede was already leaving.
    We were already behind it,
    as if we had never been.
    What was it that had not been grasped?
    Had no one stretched out their hands?
    We saw the shining stampede depart.
    Saw without knowing,
    as if we had never been.
    Watching and watching as it rushed along.
    We had not grasped it.
    The field of light, Per, again took form
    and stood groping with empty hands.
    He had not grasped it.
    We did not speak.
    It all had happened at whirlwind speed,
    passing through us and passing on.
    We still could see the stampede of light
    sweeping over the sound without a flicker
    of the surface. Trembling we watched.
    Sweeping over the water, turning the sound into fire.
    On the other side our naked girl
    dissolved into a thousand winking stars.
    That too.
    We saw that, then?
    But without understanding.
    It happened before our very eyes:
    dissolved into a thousand winking stars.
    It rushed on. Had she grasped it?
    We saw without understanding: had she
    grasped it?
    Saw, unable to think.
    A thousand winking stars, we thought, like
    some holy shock.
    Death had not come, we stood as before on the
    sweet slope.
    We had not grasped the greatness
    while it was here.
    We did not speak.
    A flower of angelica, man-tall at my side
    rustled with all its sunshades,
    rustled in our own silent storm. Already
    the field of light was beyond another crest.
    No figure stood on the rock across the sound.

5
    The Drifter and the Mirrors
    Leaning out over the water and the mirrors.
    They twinkle and bewitch.
    Be drawn towards the slime? Don’t think. Don’t think. Climb away from the slime? Don’t think. The slime was imagination? Don’t think. Nobody knows what flatters and bewitches.
    *
    Bewilderment increases in the presence of the mirrors. Leaning over as far as possible, to the point where one almost topples in. The deep water reaches right up to the rock here; tilt too far, and it would all be over. But there is still a foothold left in the heather and the scents and the hopelessness, and in all that hounds one on and that one wishes to be rid of.
    Leaning over, thinking, or at any rate trying to think. No use. No thoughts there.
    Leaning over, knowing one is about to slip. The thought of slipping becomes stronger the longer one looks down into the water. The picture down there is distinct; one can read it like a book. There is no current to pull the features awry; the mirror does not deform anything. There is a current deep down; one thinks of that.
    Yet the face is deformed now, distorted and unlike itself, the result of misfortunes that have come like avalanches—there behind him, where he has left his halflived life. What has really happened? He meets his own shocked eyes down below.
    Leaning a little bit more.
    Meeting an eye that says: Come.
    It’s as bad as that. It does not matter what the eye is now that everything has gone so perversely and painfully aground.
    Bewilderment has set in. Soon the picture will begin to glide. Begin to pull and bind and distort him. His own eyes are there no longer; he sees a fragmented eye and it numbs the links with his mind.
    A stranger on one’s own shore, become chillingly lonely. He did not consider the strength of his own resistance while there was still time. While there was still resistance.
    At the place where he has come from yawn two great sorrows and a couple of shattering defeats. Never back there, he says in this twisted moment. No, your last card has been played, he reads in the sinister eye in the water.
    There can be nothing more.
    Something must be done. Done. Halted by the water, and the pull from deep down, that’s what he thinks—because he has the inverted mirrors facing him.
    Slipping a little more.
    *
    The mirrors in the bewildered eyes down below have come