His poems contain a luminous simplicity that expands until it pushes your ego out of the nest, and there you are, alone with Truth. In a Tranströmer poem, you inhabit space differently; a body becomes a thing, a mind floats, things have lives, and even non-things, even concepts, are alive.

And I know, it might seem like this has all been about absence. But do you see it now? Absence, maybe, but absence requires an understanding of what should be. What was once. It has always been impermanence, beloveds. Impermanence was the altar I was leading us to this entire time.

Plucking chrysanthemums along the eastern fence, gazing in silence at the southern hills, the birds fly home in pairs, through the soft mountain air of dusk. In all these things there is a deep meaning, but when we’re about to express it, we suddenly forget the words.