Tag: poetry
Troubled by joy?
30 September 1998 | Fiction, poetry
Poems from Boxtrot (WSOY, 1998)
Nine lives
So far nine lives only, and
all mine, like my head in my hands.
My first was curled up at the foot of a fir tree
in the autumn forest just at day-dawn
in nighttime's raindrops.
The resin's still in my fingernails.
My second was the scent of split wood by the shed,
and the circular-saw blade's horrific disc.
The gruel, track shoes too large, and President Kekkonen,
ink spreading across my notebook, and
the clank of the railway under my dreams.
Mayday's red flags, the neighbour's daughter
naked, and dead pigeons lying on the gravel.
My third life was the discovery of anger, blind rage
turning and turning me in its leather bag,
wearing the edges of my day down. Sitting at our schooldesks
being forced towards a goal that can't be named.
Seeing how they start drinking, drinking
into their eyes that black impotent rebellion.
I'm on the point of drowning, someone's traversing
the Atlantic in a reed boat. And if I did die,
it wouldn't matter who sneered. The stars in the sky
are watching us in horror.
Sunweave
Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
Poems From Aurinkopunos (‘Sunweave’, WSOY, 1997). Introduction by Jyrki Kiiskinen
Evening in Manhattan
the mechanism clicks
in the past I suppose it was called
falling in love but now we’re expected to merely
note that the cogs of chance have revolved into a propitious position
chemicals catch fire for exciting actions
under the street old fire moves under the sewers
maybe an alligator
they are calm creatures but we of course aren’t
we bounce off of each other into each other
flee from earth’s death the rising motion
the forest grows into skyscrapers petrifies
into the rings of suns More…
The house of the rising sun
Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
Poems from Nousevan auringon talo (The house of the rising sun’, Tammi, 1997). Introduction by Jyrki Kiiskinen
Closeness. License to kill. And to go on living
becomes impossible.
When you see a waterfowl’s eyes, if you see them
in the dark, that is the right distance.
Now the fire power of our forces consists of infantry arms.
You are hard ammo exercises, controlled
regression, kiss of a porcupine, flower
from the great gardener's garden, who
shall be killed nevertheless.
The one who in every piss-stained jail cell tries
to inch his own death forward a little.
* More...
Poems
30 June 1998 | Fiction, poetry
Sometimes
Sometimes the river that gave birth to me
Whispers in my ear. And while the harsh hand
Of day keeps at me, my river
Sounds like birds walking on the leaves,
And the waters speak to me in Finnish:
Ikävä on olla kartanolla –
I am alone and waiting in the yard…. More…
The scorpion’s heart
Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
Poems From Skorpionin sydän (‘The scorpion’s heart’, WSOY, 1997). Introduction by Jyrki Kiiskinen
Earth’s hot womb brought to a boil
the grain ripens
among your golden chaff
and sharp awns
you walk and listen
Death
The Stranger
here it found a place,
its dark apartments glittered
the dead
perfumed, trembled
and now
through the small cremation hatch
you see
see how the coffin thunderously
flares, disappears
in elemental fire
*
Do not be afraid
Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
Poems from Älä pelkää (‘Do not be afraid’, WSOY, 1997). Introduction by Jyrki Kiiskinen
Travel preparations
Late Friday night. Strange noises in the yard, someone
bangs on the door to the next stairway. Electricity hums.
I have just come back from the U.S. and France, from Sweden too.
On their channels, people laugh. They are having fun.
They are, nowadays, strange, young, and handsome, each and every one.
We did not have that when I was young. We limped.
We did not talk. We stammered tortuous phrases
and, while embracing, were afraid to be seen.
We did embrace. We clung to one another, expecting
to drown alone in every ninth wave.
I know my place is not here where I am. I think, I try
to construct conclusions. Someone looks over my shoulder.
Slowly the universe was born out of my mother s womb.
I am not responsible for its sudden extinction. On a Friday night.
I let them rule, the beauties and young lovers. My ticket has been written.
it is ready. I have had my shots against fear. I have my passport.
Bulldog
No European he who does not every morning
put on a tie. This morning, European
as I am, I looked at myself in the mirror
and noted that, incontrovertibly, more
and more every day, I resemble a
sad bulldog. Who has ever seen a bulldog smile?
We know we were born into the wrong world,
born to struggle. My bloodshot eyes tell me
I would like nothing better than to bed down m the straw
with my adversary, the bull, and ponder the stars.
Paradise apple
Consciousness is anchored to dark matter
as are the swells to the ocean. It is a quality
of matter, darkness glittering darkness. No need for words,
the overarching multidimensional web is one seamless
thought, not verifiable by observations or signs.
As soon as light penetrates the ambiguity of being,
the fruit falls outside the bounds of paradise.
The first sense
For another moment, you are incomprehensibly close,
you are mental image, you are voice, almost scent.
Only touch is missing, the most elementary of sensations
but precisely the one with which God tested the clay
with which the worm knows itself
with which there is hurt in torture and love,
and with which I miss your retreating appearance,
your tender groin, your rough hand.
(Written after a telephone conversation.)
Translated by Anselm Hollo
Among horses
30 June 1998 | Authors, Interviews
Photo: Cato Lein
‘Now it’s really damned difficult to know whether these poems will be close to the reader, or strange,’ Tua Forsström said a couple of days before the publication last autumn of her collection Efter att ha tillbringat en natt bland hästar (‘After spending a night among horses’).
Her previous collection, Parkerna (‘The parks’), published five years ago, found its readers and swept the board of literary prizes. The new poems, too, come close to the reader; the book’s Finland-Swedish publisher has sold out and the prize-boards have been swept again, including the Nordic Council Prize for Literature.
Writing the new collection took five years, as was the case with Parkerna. Tua Forsström writes slowly: nine collections in a quarter of a century. Her first collection, En dikt om kärlek och annat (‘A poem about love and other things’), appeared in 1972. More…
Talking to Andrei
30 June 1998 | Fiction, poetry
Poems from Efter att ha tillbringat en natt bland hästar (‘After spending a night among horses’, Söderströms, 1997)
The snow is whirling over the roses of the inner courtyard
The snow is whirling over the roses of the inner courtyard.
Did not bring boots or scarf with me, leaf
through books, don’t know what to do with all this light!
You would not approve of the colours.
It’s too impressive, Andrei Arsenyevich, there is too
much, too much of everything!
You swapped your wings for an air balloon, a clumsy
contraption twined together from ropes and rags, I remember it well.
Earlier, I had a lot and didn’t remember. Hard
to keep to the point. Hard to keep to the point.
Hope to get back. Hope to get back to the principle
of the wings. Fact remains: the cold preserved
the rose garden last night. ‘The zone is a zone, the zone is life,
and a person may either perish or survive as
he makes his way through this life. Whether he manages it or
not depends on his sense of own worth.’* A hare
almost leapt into the vestibule here at the Foundation,
mottled against the snow; in the hare’s diary it’s October, after all.
You seem to be in quite a malignant humour,
and it is possible that none of this interests you.
On the other hand, you quite often complain yourself.
I’m writing because you are dead and because I woke up
last spring in my hotel facing the street in Benidorm to that wonderful
high twittering. One ought not to constantly say sorry, one ought
not to constantly say thank you, one ought to say thank you. Lake Mälaren like lead down there. The rest is white and red. More…
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
The forest, everything
31 March 1998 | Authors, Interviews
Lassi Nummi
Lassi Nummi (1928–2012) considered himself a prose-writer who has strayed into poetry. In a career spanning almost half a century and 25 collections of poetry, his preoccupations, and his central metaphors, remained constant: landscape, trees, bushes, blades of grass. Interview (1997) by Tarja Roinila
Now I can see how
distinct
each twig is on the bush, each grassblade
with, all around, the void
(1986)
My first encounter with the poet Lassi Nummi came with Maisema (‘Landscape’), a novella which appeared in the same year as his first collection of poetry. The experience was startling. The text delineates the building timbers of his subsequent poetry: trees, bushes, blades of grass. Maisema is a dazzlingly modern work, a complete realisation of something Virginia Woolf wrote in the same year, 1925: ‘Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness.’ More…