Four poems by Wava Stürmer

Several Ostrobothnian authors used to meet at what used to be Stockmann's café, Jakobstad, every Tuesday lunchtime at two o'clock during my year living there in 1978-79. One of them was the poet Wava Stürmer. She was born in the Belgian Congo in 1929, will therefore be eighty this year:

There is in us all
a mild sea.
The light refracts on the surface.
The stones at the bottom
cannot be seen.
The sand moves
when the waves want
when the wind wants.

So many rains
that people have lived
so old is mankind.

The same rain
runs down our faces
and we don't know
whether we're crying.

*

Not even the sea
has freedom without shores.

Only has winds.

*

The waves
are like mountains
congealed in movement.

The light is there
in the wing of the gull
when it scratches
the silk of the heavens.

The creature
on the mountain summit
no longer human
not yet a bird.

*

The land
we cannot travel to
exists.

Rain falls and snow.

We must
not even
remember.

But the images
burst their way up.

Messengers from a future
we have already passed.


***

Poems, even short unrhymed ones such as these, can be translated in various ways. I maintain that translating poetry is harder than translating prose. There are hidden rhythms, allusions. So too here. Later, I will discuss some of the problems I had when doing these swift drafts.

The poems are the first four of the 1990 collection Så länge vi minns, published by Söderströms, Helsinki.