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

Poems from Taivas päivystää (‘Sky on duty’, WSOY, 1996). Introduction by Tero Liukkonen

Flitting from dream to dream. Vanishings.
And you can’t even look.
What you looked with has been taken.
Then there’s more you know.
How helpless you are.
Then you know what Bottom meant
awake from his dream and trying to remember
what he’d lost. Then he did wake.
‘Man’s but a patched fool,’ he said,
‘if he’ll offer to say what methought I had.’

                                                                          Everything had gone topsy-turvy
                                                                          but she just went on feeling
                                                                                      she was hanging her head,
                                                                          she just went on feeling she was searching the lawn
                                                                                                   for a four-leaf clover,
                                                                          and the lawn had covered everything up
                                                                          and not a soul was troubling her.  More...

Poems, introduction by Ilpo Tiihonen

Bloggs

You work eight hours a day,
sleep thirteen.
Three hours are gone in eating
and telling dirty stories by your bed.

When they say, ‘If only you’d
read something, mate –
you’re dribbling your life away,’
back you come with:
‘Living like this 1 make everything mine.’

Bloggs, Bloggs,
should the world be changed for you?

                            From Tie pilven alta ('The way out of the cloud', 1939)  More...

Poems from En lycklig mänska (‘A happy person’, Söderströms, 1996). Introduction by Rika Lesser

Why shouldn't Johann Sebastian Bach be good enough
      even in this my 59th summer.
I contemplate the apple tree in the middle of the field. 
The continuo branches out just above the earth into four
      trunks, which, in turn, divide
into arms more slender, where the fruits ripen.
The foliage patterns the sky, hands plait the voices
      into a basket.
Under the earth, where the roots rehearse, I wait for
      the succulent, faintly sour fruit.

*  More...

Poems by Arto Melleri. Introduction by Maris Gothóni

The airship Italia

Farewell, darlings,
General Nobile's sailing in his airship
to a glittering death...
whoever knows the journey's end
as he sets out is there already,
wafted on his wing-stubs;
farewell, doubters smiles on your lips
                                          like the imprints of horse-bits:
'he'll never get there this way'
'get there' – as if 'there' were
some place;
in one day you can only manage a day's journey,
it's more realistic, far more, to get the measure
                                          of Perdition;
farewell, darlings,
I'm off with him, his scrivener, I'm stretching
over the verge of tears towards boundless laughter,
the dignified business of tarring and feathering,
I'm making notes: this is a dream, a single night's
                                         eternity,
a sound mind's storming of the Bastille;
farewell, you who always know better
                                   what should be done than the doers, and how,
you don't do, you know, you put your hat on a shelf
called History, 
General Nobile's flying over the craters of history
northwards, northwards, and the sun's
                                   scoopful of molten tin
is about to splash in the cold ocean,
and the moon's a ball of camphor-soaked cotton wool
wiping the smoking sky,
farewell, darlings, there, flashing ahead,
are the crystal shores of Ultima Thule

From Ilmalaiva Italia (‘Airship Italia’, 1980) More…

Poems from Homecoming (translated by David McDuff, published by Carcanet Press, 1993)

It was hopeless trying to keep the window on the yard side clean
Perhaps it was an advantage not to see clearly,
roofs and chimneys, indeed, even the sky became friendly
seen from this renunciation. When it rained
the water formed streets of narrow drops, almost silver-coloured.
I considered them closely.
What use I should have for them I did not know.

*

More…

Poems from Erotus (WSOY, 1995). Introduction by Lauri Otonkoski

As the future First Mate dreams, embryonic sails in his eyes
and runs, a rat, from one ship to the next in the harbor, so I saw my image in the imago
pushing out of its chrysalis under my father’s hand that held the lens.
His other hand rested on my shoulder like a wing,
‘Resurrection!’ he cried out, and I felt my heart tumble.
And there it was: Parnassius Apollo or Parnassius Mnemosyne mnemosyne
on the glass slide, straightening its flying gear,
and a moment later, a narcotized, trembling piece of jewelry.
I handed my father a shiny pin, and he pushed it skillfully
through the body. Daylight adhered to the collection.
For the duration of the blink of an eye, all butterfly wings breathed. More…

Poems from the collection Musta oli valkoinen (‘Black was white’, WSOY, 1995). Introduction by Jukka Koskelainen

When?

			         When I learned to pay attention
to unlikely reptiles
to surprising glacier waters
to nightgowned rejections
to wall-mounted assault rifles 
to traveling angels
to lips shaped like promises
to mussels swimming in dreams 
to crashes, rules and funerals
to shady, secret sacristies
to the indecisiveness of dancing shoes
to the immeasurable indifference of looks like bullets 
to spring, myself and seductions slow as clouds
			                                     all of these
					                                         between the words,
was that when the difficulties began?

About the third

To stop waiting, the second step.
To be born of woman. The first.

The price of the word and the moon
	    are determined with the same weightless scales.

The third we don’t know about, don’t ask.

On the ear’s walk

The landscape's deepest melody flowed on
	     over the banks of the resounding Middle Ages.

Do you hear, do you hear it
the way a snail hears,
that snail there who teaches
learns from the earth’s replies, learning
the snail hears and gets there,
gets there for sure
even the slow one gets there,
even the slower one will
then get there, it will
surely get there, into the pot.

Herbal wisdom

New churches, old
	                       harmonized organs and repetitions 
like a prayer or a psalm for seven voices. 
Against scant blue
	               a hundred people
believe in pilots and safety belts. The wind
	                                                 just a little too strong.

But my heart it was, that loaded institution 
through four expectations it came 
	                                               here. Exactly here
where you, with both hands, 
	               almost inaudibly
intended to break
	              the fragrant life of a sprig of thyme.

That soundless break, the speech of dust, said all
			                                  I understood.

Around zero o’clock

Just be the shape of an angel, be, be 
	                be, be a screeching
   hatful of sleepless night	it dresses 
even the seagulls in diver's suits, be
	      be lazy intellect and come
to bed
be manager of nightmare
	  and conqueror of desire

	to say

Be the disease of saying 	Be the lifelong remedy
	   which 	                        whether you take it or not
	              certainly kills

Be the one who no longer is
	     a dab of the freedom of the void, a flight of three strides
out of thought's night	                    be

Because I’m jading

Translated by Anselm Hollo

Poems from Regnets uråldriga sätt att regna (‘The rain’s primordial way of raining’, Schildts, 1993)

the necessity of low tide
the necessity of still, mud-grey days
where the bird’s egg and your memory hide in the sand of the shy

the weak light
made of molten wind

and our faces deep inside the shadow.
we sleep: we dream a dream of sprouting shoots,
of the red heads of the newborn children
that palpitate beneath the ice –

More…

Poems from Kuka puhuu (‘Who’s speaking’, Otava, 1994). Introduction by Tero Liukkonen

They lie in the flurrying snow, languid as a naked woman taking a shower,
the mountains, their luscious thighs ajar; under snow-white skin,
confident rib-tongues curve down to the gully
where a lone skier slides and struggles in unbroken snow

A dense stand of spruce grows from her thighs, moonlight
shimmers on her flank, her hair is green

A hundred miles long, face hidden under the covers, out of the smoke
droplets emerge

slow is her breath in the wind, waiting for spring, under the snow

No one can conquer that vision, move it, bury it,
stitch it shut

she has come without being invited, living rooms grow inside her,
mice rub their whiskers in her hiding places,
obedient, the sun sets behind her, opens the dark door More…

Poems from Ankkuripaikka (‘Anchorage’; WSOY, 1994) and Sormenjälkiä tyhjässä (‘Fingerprints in the void’, WSOY, 1992)

Images from nature

A sick fox recoils to the deepest corner of his hideout.
His coat’s moulting in tufts, rain’s drenching him, death’s on the way.
A pine stands sentry on the pile of stones, its bright green needles
adorned with dew for this last day. Somehow it’s a celebration.
A crow drops in, and sings a note. ‘Goodbye,’ the forest sighs, and
so does the whole world. A soul’s ecloding from its cellular pupa.
It yelps as it exits: ‘Why? Why are there still stars? Why must I fall so deep?’ More…

Poems from Kali (Schildts, 1993)

‘Kali is the Liberator. Kali gives protection to those who know her. Kali is the Terrific One, the Destroyer of Time. As the Dark Shakti of Shiva, Kali is Space, Air, Fire, Water and Earth. Kali performs all the physical needs of Shiva. She is the Possessor of the Sixty-four Arts and increases the Joy of the Lord of Creation. Kali is the Pure Transcendental Shakti. Kali is the Night of Darkness.’

Kalika Purana

*

you show me a distant world
where all the beautiful is mine
you show yourself to me, naked, and whisper:

not the poppy
that murders the heroin addict,

not love
not my dark sister,
that will be the death of your love More…

From Dikter från havets botten (‘Poems from the bottom of the sea’, Söderström & Co, 1993)

Who was he that lived my life and now
is some Other? Who was the little boy
asking questions? Who the teenager asking
who the little boy was? The yellowing photo
remains, and the hand holding the photo. The photograph,
the hand, the image of the boy, the hand’s image. More…

‘Some people play bridge; some people shoot pool; we read and write poems’, says Jouni Inkala (born 1966) of his generation of poets. These poems from his prize-winning first collection of poems, Tässä sen reuna (‘Here is its edge’, WSOY, 1992)

Behind the window, wet snowflakes rise and descend,
cold white insects.

In the summer, their brothers swirled in the sun’s low,
silent volleys,

as I sped on my bicycle through the dark gullet of spruce-rows some always filtered into my eyes, my mouth.

They were cool, even then.
Now I sacrifice toenails, relinquish some of my own warmth to the back of an armchair.

As a dark, painful spot in God’s brain,
which is unknown

as long as it isn’t troubled into truth,
pain made visible, known. More…