Author: Lassi Nummi

Weird calm

Issue 1/1998 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry

A selection of poems, translated by Herbert Lomas and Anselm Hollo. Interview by Tarja Roinila

Agnosis IV

Set your altar up in the evening,
 in the morning clear it away:
 the wandering goes on. Don't persuade yourself
             of anything, or anyone else:
 fearful forces are epidemic,
 no place is sacred
 for long.
                                 Again and again
                                 the sacred
 starts.
                                                If you happen to be
 there don't refuse to see.
(1989)

a light wind
            stirring a treetop:
 a shoal of fish
            in blue abyss

From Hiidentyven (‘Weird calm’, Otava, 1984) More…

Poems

31 March 1998 | Fiction, poetry

Agnosis IV

Set your altar up in the evening,
in the morning clear it away:
the wandering goes on. Don't persuade yourself
       of anything, or anyone else:
fearful forces are epidemic,
no place is sacred
for long.
       Again and again
       the sacred
starts.
       If you happen to be there
don't refuse to see.

a light wind
       stirring a treetop:
a shoal of fish
       in blue abyss

More…

Poems

Issue 1/1979 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry

Poems from Lähdössä tänään (‘Leaving today’, 1977) Introduction by Jouko Tyyri

1

‘The wind’s speaking.’ If the wind were really speaking
could we endure its words
so void, flinty, so groping?
Inside them
they have
salt, horror,
mania: a long-drawn black speechless
roller that wipes the coast clean
of houses, woods, junk. It swashes
your eyes. If I’d had some
feeling. Or thought. If
I was something. If I was I.
It’s gone.
There’s nothing here. Only a draught.
The air moving back and forth, soon to drop.

2

Orlando di Lasso's melodies
airy, without a touch of soil
                           a little dust on
as much as might be on a butterfly's wing
                           only just so much

Orlando himself, four hundred years
remoulded into loam, coalesced with dust
just like you, you, just like you More…