Books from Finland - A literary journal of writing from and about Finland.

Poems from Parittelun jälkeinen selkeys (‘Post-coital clarity’, WSOY, 2003). Introduction by Matti Saurama

Enlightenment needs no tools

1.   And I laughed at everything
           and didn’t want to see anything old
there was a fingernail-sized buddha and I walked by it
in the room, trying to find the ceiling,
                           camping out in life, fag in mouth

the soft letters of the clouds, and a blowing skysign
         oh sky

2.    I stand on the street corner
       illuminated like a phone box.
       On the way to anywhere
       and always there already.  More...

Poems from Istun vastapäätä (‘I’m sitting across from’, WSOY, 2002). Introduction by Anselm Hollo

After the last lines spoken, snowflakes fall into the river.
You flow on out. Stop.
People keep going, as do the credits,
into the dark, out of sight.
You don’t remember the name of this street
but its back hunches up into a bridge across the fog.
From when on have we been terrified? The heart
wants to say something about that, to whomever
happens to cross its path, one’s own heart,
the beat that keeps on repeating itself.
An unpleasant warmth
on the seat that has just been abandoned. More…

Poems from Kirjoittamaton (’Unwritten’, WSOY, 2002). Introduction by Jukka Koskelainen

[Chekhov visits a French prostitute]

The room brightly lit like a library that stays open at night.
From the threshold onward, a scent of freshly cut damp grass
and resin. In the curtain swim black goldfish, gasping for air
and the carpet glows, all too red, a red carpet to hell.
The girl sits on the edge of the bed, her face
as expectant as a stuffed nightingale, stares inscrutably
at the guest, until the ice age his presence has brought
begins to melt a little around the edges. Drop by drop,
dripping. He takes his coat off, his shirt
but keeps the pince-nez on his nose. ‘Because without it,
I won’t be able to see you at all.’ The candle
smokes, hisses, even, if you listen to it up close.
On the wall next to the bed the guest’s shadow melts
into the girl’s. Then two horns appear on top of her head
and her shadow bursts into shaky laughter. Then she stops,
takes his mocking fingers into both her hands, kisses them
lightly and says, ‘Let’s do it quickly, and then you’ll just hold me quietly,
so I can tell you about my greatest dream.’
‘What is it,’ he asks, his hair entangled in hers. Now
there’s another scent in the room, the acrid odor of rails
made more intense by a hot summer’s day, and the girl
whispers: “That my two sisters and I could leave here
and go back to Paris. Home to Paris. Oh, Paris!” More…