TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER

“Icelandic Hurricane”

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No earth tremor, but a skyquake. Turner could have painted it, secured by ropes. A single  mitten whirled past right now, several miles from its hand. Facing the storm I am heading for that house on the other side of the field. I flutter in the hurricane. I am being x-rayed, my skeleton hands in its application for discharge. Panic grows while I tack about, I am wrecked, I am wrecked and drown on dry land! How heavy it is, all that I suddenly have to carry, how heavy it is for the butterfly to tow a barge! There at last. A final bout of wrestling with the door. And now inside. Behind the huge window-pane. What a strange and magnificent invention glass is—to be close without being stricken… Outside a horde  of transparent splinters of gigantic shapes rush across the lava plain. But I flutter no more. I sit behind the glass, still, my own portrait.

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I've read this poem a thousand times. I'm always struck by the line "What a strange and magnificent invention glass is - to be close without being stricken."