Sheep View 2

Also on the theme of Faroese writing, there's an extensive dual-language anthology of contemporary Faroese poetry in a special issue of the online literary magazine PLUME. The poets include Daniella Louisa Andreasen, Sissal Kampmann, Vónbjørt Vang, Oddfríður Marni Rasmussen, Guðrið Helmsdal and Tóroddur Poulsen, and the translations are by Randi Ward.

The Bat Effect

by Pia Tafdrup

We have learned that a wing-beat

from a butterfly on one

side of the globe

can cause a storm

on the other,

we now also know that a virus

has transmitted itself

from a bat to a human

at a market in Wuhan,

the sick person’s coughing has spread

a swirl of Covid-19 to the rest of the world

without discriminating

between gender, ethnicity or religion.

A storm of corona, a storm of infection,

tiny particles like invading parasites

in living cells

induce coughing, fever, difficulty

with breathing,

lead to slow suffocation.

Suspected cases are quarantined, the rest of us

forced into a time-warped community

where we have in common

each being confined to our homes,

unless at high risk

we’re performing essential tasks.

Plovdiv

by Laus Strandby Nielsen

There are no clouds over Plovdiv

today. They all followed Orpheus

down to the dark where they were late

for the concert. What should they do?

The door to the music was closed. Or-

pheus, Orpheus himself sounded like

an echo you could hear but faintly.

There was scarcely room for them

all in this uppermost part of the under-

world in which they had landed, just

like a flock of desperate refugees

before a bristling barbed wire fence,

so did they huddle together not knowing

inside from out. Here the transformation

took place: the clouds flowed like water

down to the underworld, making chaos

and mud. For a long time, Orpheus kept

his singing head above the hazardous

mud, but his mouth was filled,

his eyes and ears, and when at last

through the mud he heard the beloved’s

whisper like a strangely bubbling sound,

it was too late. Too late is the not

so cheerful motto of this story.

Der er ingen skyer over Plovdiv

i dag. De fulgte alle efter Orpheus

ned i mørket hvor de kom for sent

til koncerten. Hvad skulle de gøre?

Døren til musikken var lukket. Or-

pheus, selveste Orpheus lød som

et ekko man kun svagt kunne høre.

Der var næsten ikke plads til dem

alle i denne øverste del af under-

verdenen hvor de var havnet, ganske

som en flok fortvivlede flygtninge

foran et hegn af flænsende pigtråd,

sådan trykkede de sig sammen og

vidste hverken ud eller ind. Her skete

forvandlingen: skyerne flød som vand

ned i underverdenen, skabende kaos

og mudder. Længe holdt Orpheus sit

syngende hoved oven over det farlige

mudder, men hans mund blev fyldt op,

hans øjne og ører, og da han til sidst

gennem mudderet hørte den elskedes

hvisken som en underligt boblende lyd,

da var det for sent. For sent er det ikke

så muntre motto for denne fortælling.

translated from Danish by David McDuff

from Laus Strandby Nielsen: -- og andre steder, Asger Schnacks Forlag, 2019

Claes Andersson (1937-2019)

Hufvudstadsbladet has an obituary of the poet, psychiatrist and politician Claes Andersson, who recently passed away at the age of 82.

The Letter

Sunniva Brynnel Group continues to develop and evolve, with a new album that marks a further step along the road from the Blue Ejder album and its settings of poems by Karin Boye. The album was recorded in NYC and features jazz musicians from Canada and the U.S., including Nathan Reising on alto sax. There are a couple of new Boye settings here, in my translation. In general the tracks in the album present an interesting blend of folk style and post-Coltrane improvisation and harmony, where voice and lyrics are fused with the work of the instrumental ensemble.

Laus Strandby Nielsen: Two Poems

RECOGNITION

I’m the only person
in the whole world
who sees the world
with my eyes.
And now I see
myself see myself
almost as a kind of
central heating system
with pipes and thermostats,
calcifications
and insurance policies
where everything
is written in small print
in medical Latin.

I see myself
see myself
as a chemical factory
with a built-in power station
and without exaggeration
a lot of electronics.

I see myself
see myself
as a very
advanced computer
which is rather primitive
in certain respects.

I see myself
see myself as
an investment
and an investor,
sohelpmegod
as a market,
whimsically logical
swinging
from one form
of hysteria
to another
and back again,
forced against
an equilibrium
that is impossible.

I see myself
see myself
as a bank.
But how could it
go so wrong?
And can it happen
again? Here?

I see myself
see myself
as a small
and yet dizzying
swarm of small devils
that hide
behind one another
when they realise
they are being seen. Easy,
take it easy, say the
ones in front that are the
smallest, while they
swarm away, easy now.
There is no reason
to exaggerate.
Absolutely no reason.
A little smile is enough.

But I don’t recognise
the eyes that see me.

(It must be both
complete and incomplete,
says the spin
doctor, but
it’s all very well for him to say so
sitting there
in that rain-sodden tree
advertising
himself
with his yellow beak.)


GENKENDELSE

Jeg er den eneste
i hele verden
der ser verden
med mine øjne.
Og nu ser jeg
mig selv se mig selv 
nærmest som en slags
centralvarmesystem 
med rør og termostater,
forkalkninger
og forsikringer 
hvor det hele 
står med småt
på lægelatin. 

Jeg ser mig selv 
se mig selv 
som en kemisk fabrik
med indbygget elværk 
og uden at overdrive
en hel del elektronik.

Jeg ser mig selv
se mig selv
som en meget
avanceret computer
der er ret primitiv
på visse punkter.

Jeg ser mig selv
se mig selv som
en investering
og en investor,
gudhjælpemig
som et marked, 
lunefuldt logisk
svingende  
fra en form 
for hysteri
til en anden
og tilbage,
tvunget imod 
en ligevægt
som er umulig.

Jeg ser mig selv
se mig selv
som en bank.
Hvordan kunne det
dog gå så galt?
Og kan det ske
igen? Her?

Jeg ser mig selv
se mig selv
som et mindre 
og dog svimlende 
mylder af smådjævle
som gemmer sig
bag ved hinanden
når de mærker
de bliver set. Rolig,
bare rolig, siger de
forreste der er de
mindste, mens de
myldrer løs, rolig nu. 
Der er ingen grund
til at overdrive.
Absolut ingen grund.
Et lille smil er nok.

Men jeg genkender 
ikke de øjne der ser mig.

(Det skal være både
afsluttet og uafsluttet,
siger kommunikations-
rådgiveren, men det
kan han sagtens sige
som han sidder der
i det regnvåde træ
og reklamerer
for sig selv
med sit gule næb.)




PORTRAIT OF A FULL STOP

When it’s dark it gets light.
When it’s light it gets dark.
When it’s dark it does get light
at some point, but at some point

it gets dark again of course.
Then it gets light. Then it gets dark.
Light. Dark. Something is wrong. It’s
completely wrong. It’s going too fast.

In the dark-light I stumble into the light-dark
and hit something soft, the darkness falls,
I’m covered by a fur coat of light. Here

you can reflect that what you say
may end up in a poem, and if you can’t
recognise it at all, what then?


PORTRÆT AF ET PUNKTUM

Når det er mørkt, bliver det lyst.
Når det er lyst, bliver det mørkt. 
Når det så er mørkt, så bliver det lyst
på et tidspunkt, men på et tidspunkt

så bliver det selvfølgelig mørkt igen.
Så bliver det lyst. Så bliver det mørkt.
Lyst. Mørkt. Der er noget galt. Der
er noget helt galt: Det går for hurtigt.

I mørkelyset snubler jeg ind i lysmørket
og rammer noget blødt, mørket fælder, 
jeg er dækket af en pels af lys. Her

kan man tænke på at det man siger
måske havner i et digt, og når man så
slet ikke kan genkende det, hvad så?


© Laus Strandby Nielsen and David McDuff 2019

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Anteckningar

Tua Forsström has published her twelfth collection of poetry, Anteckningar, this time with Förlaget M and Bonniers. The book is in some sense a continuation of En kväll i oktober rodde jag ut på sjön (2013), though the new volume focuses more acutely on the theme of death, and the tone of the inner discourse has shifted imperceptibly towards a new and harsh gravity. "Tua Forsström is still one of Finland Sweden's most dynamic and vibrant poets," writes Svenska Yle's reviewer, and it would be hard to argue with that judgement. An English translation of the book should be forthcoming from Bloodaxe Books before too long - I'm presently working in that direction.

An African Hand

by Anni Sumari

An African hand
has carefully shaped this wooden sculpture
almost 70 cm long, with two heads
and one body
two identical girl's heads, the eyes
closed now because,
because they can't see with them any more,
death has abducted the two-headed
goddess in its black armpit
goddess who never learned
to walk
but could speak, with her two mouths
words that were listened to closely
and also repeated to the next generation
the two heads spoke in turn
and one stopped to listen
when the other spoke, their conversations
would have been all the more interesting
and weighty and important
as soon as they realised they were
a goddess we would call
Siamese
Siamese twins although Siam
is in Siam and far away
they predicted
the past and the future
like the dreams of aborigines
but they had been born
in the deep armpit of Africa
unable to continue their lives
as gods
as gods
born for death
unsuited for life
even though they were so well equipped
far better than ordinary people
with two boat-shaped mouths
four boat-shaped eyes,
two noses, baobabs growing upside down,
two sets of eyebrows like two horizons
in the east and in the west
two rose-coloured brains
like the sea's surface touched by sun
going up and down
two coconut skulls
four labyrinthine ears
two clavicles connecting
rivers of two throats
two shoulders
two hands
that wouldn’t
greet one another
one heart
one belly
one womb
two feet

that wouldn't 

tread on the other's toes


Afrikkalainen käsi
on tarkasti muotoillut tämän puuveistoksen,
melkein 70 cm pitkän, kaksipäisen
yksiruumiisen
kaksi identtistä tytönpäätä, silmät
jo suljettuina sillä,
sillä he eivät enää näe niillä
kuolema on kaapannut kaksipäisen
jumalattaren mustaan kainaloonsa
jumalattaren joka ei koskaan oppinut 
kävelemään
mutta osasi puhua, kahdella suullaan
joitain sanoja joita kuunneltiin tarkasti
ja toistettiin jälkipolvillekin
kaksi päätä puhui vuorotellen
ja toinen vaikeni kuuntelemaan
kun toinen puhui, heidän keskustelunsa
olisivat käyneet yhä kiinnostavammiksi 
ja merkittävämmiksi ja vakavammiksi
kun he olisivat 
ymmärtäneet olevansa jumalatar,
jota me nimittäisimme
siiamilaiseksi
siiamilaisiksi kaksosiksi vaikka siam
on siamissa ja kaukana
he ennustivat
mennyttä ja tulevaa
kuin aboriginaalien unet 
mutta he olivat syntyneet 
Afrikan syvässä kainalossa 
pystymättä jatkamaan elämää
niin kuin jumalat 
niin kuin jumalat
syntyneinä kuolemaan
kykenemättöminä elämään
vaikka olivat niin hyvin varustettuja
paljon paremmin kuin tavalliset ihmiset
kaksi suuta, veneenmuotoista
 neljä silmää, veneenmuotoista
kahden nenän ylösalaisin kasvavat baobabit
kahdet kulmakarvat kuin kaksi horisonttia
idässä ja lännessä
kahdet ruusuiset aivot
kuin aurinko koskettaessaan meren pintaa 
ylös tullessaan ja alas mennessään
kaksi kookospähkinäkalloa
neljä labyrinttikorvaa 
kahden kurkun virrat
yhtyvät solisluut 
kaksi olkapäätä
kaksi kättä 
jotka eivät
tervehtisi toisiaan
yksi sydän
yksi vatsa
yksi kohtu 
kaksi jalkaa
jotka eivät
astuisi toinen toisensa varpaille

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Coming Here

My translation of Hid (1992), the third part of the autobiographical trilogy, is now also available in the Kindle Store.

Standing Here

Gösta Ågren

My translation of  the first part of Gösta Ågren's autobiographical trilogy, Jär, is now available as a Kindle e-book, Standing Here, published on Amazon's KDP. 

My short introductory essay on the trilogy, published in Books from Finland magazine in 1992, can be read here. 

Pia Tafdrup audio recordings

News that Pia Tafdrup is currently recording readings of all her poetry collections, which will be distributed as sound files for download over the Internet.

Body and Soul

Out of the Blue: New Short Fiction from Iceland, edited by Helen Mitsios, with a foreword by Sjón. University of Minnesota Press, 183 pp. 

In addition to being an enjoyable read, this anthology of recent short Icelandic fiction in English translation gives an overview of contemporary prose writing from a part of the world where writing, and the profession of writer, are traditionally held in high esteem. The Icelandic author is a representative of his or her nation, travelling the globe with some of the same nonchalance that the ancient Vikings brought to their more goal-oriented excursions.

Some reviewers of the collection have expressed regret that a number of the stories are set not in Iceland but abroad – mostly in regions of southern Europe. Yet given the history of Icelandic culture, with its openness to Roman and Hellenic influences, this does not seem unnatural. The Icelander abroad is a chameleon-like figure, at once distinctive and transparent, changing according to surroundings, and abandoning foreign cultures and languages as quickly as adopting them. 

Auður Jónsdóttir’s ‘Self-Portrait’, the opening story in the book, is a study of the tension between the fragile consciousness of the vulnerable outsider and the actually threatening nature of a foreign environment. The Sardinian beach resort, with its heat, its homeless people and Mafia operatives, turns out to be more forbidding than the austere northern climate it was supposed to replace and compensate for – in the end it’s a threat to the self, and needs to be rejected.

In Kristín Ómarsdóttir’s ‘Afternoon by the Pacific Ocean’ the film stars Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe, both of Nordic descent, read Joyce and Icelandic sagas together on an afternoon picnic under the Californian sun:

Marilyn lay down on her side in the fetal position, and with one hand under her cheek, she looked wide-eyed at Greta, who opened Egil’s Saga. They were at the part where Egil wants to marry Asgerdur after returning from a successful raid. Greta started reading with Marilyn watching her. The sun over the Pacific pierced through the curtains of the big window and bathed the actresses’ feet in golden rays.

The stories set in Iceland – and there are more of them in the volume than some reviewers have implied – blend elements of nature, psychology and society to create an inner and outer portrait of individual people whose lives are at once conditioned and set free by a sense of being at the margins, yet able to look into the depths in a way that is unusual and uncanny. The father in Ólafur Gunnarsson’s ‘Killer Whale’ is gripped by a death wish that is linked to archetypical figures of Icelandic natural and human history:

“No, they’re loners,” Olaf said. “They live in their own herds, by themselves. They don’t mix with other whales. They attack them. They feed on them.”

Likewise Gyrðir Elíasson’s ‘The Black Dog’ focuses on a negative, destructive element in Icelandic folklore and national psychology: in a Kafkaesque parable, the author’s own depression materialises in the image of a dog that ‘for some reason’ can be seen ‘only in mirrors’.

Not all of the narratives dwell on the darker side of human nature, and instead explore the quirkier regions of the supernatural. As Sjón points out in his foreword, in place of philosophy and metaphysics medieval Iceland had poetry and tales – ‘debates on the interaction between body and soul, for example, could be conducted through the medium of verses or stories about birds.’  Óskar Árni Óskarsson writes about a pen that possesses a magical power, granting the gift of originality to its poetry-writing owners as it passes from hand to hand – a cheap, unremarkable Biro. And again in parable form, Magnús Sigurðsson presents a series of dream-like narrative reflections, one of which centres on a play between the Latin word lego, ‘I read’, and the etymology of the Danish toy manufacturer Lego.

For the most part the translations by several hands read well, with the occasional lapse where the process becomes too literal a transposition of Icelandic syntax and phrasing. 

In general Helen Mitsios is to be congratulated on having compiled a highly readable and often entertaining miscellany of writing from a European literary culture that is still not as well known to the rest of the world as it ought to be. The characters of these short stories inhabit a realm that lies somewhere between fiction, mythology and poetry, and everywhere in them there is the sense of a lone, reflective wanderer, observing and noting inner and outer realities. It’s almost as if the same narrator were somehow present throughout the entire volume. As a result, the stories are best read in sequence, almost like a collective novel rather than as isolated texts: I found it the most satisfactory way to absorb this fascinating and eminently re-readable book.

Two Poems

by Gösta Ågren

The Future Is...

The future is unfurnished

as if it were a room

in place of an idea,

but your plans are ready

and you start work,

as to begin with fate is

so light that we don’t notice

the burden. The inevitable

needs no emphasis.


 July. Night.

The road doesn’t release

its grip on the car.

Driving is only

rhythm. The journey

moves slowly through

the summer night, which is

white with now. Sadness

heals sorrow.

from Centralsång (2013)

translated from Finland-Swedish by David McDuff

Central Song

Reviewing Gösta Ågren’s new collection Centralsång, Michel Ekman writes about the “deceptive calm” of Ågren’s poetry:

Vår plikt är att minnas grymheten, men själva minnesakten kräver ett mått av ro och avskildhet... En dal i våldet hette det stora urval ur sin produktion som Gösta Ågren en gång gav ut. Spänningen mellan å ena sidan iakttagandet / formulerandet och å andra sidan det blinda och ständiga våldet som genomsyrar tillvaron går igenom hela hans författarskap.

No Man's Land

by Pia Tafdrup

My grey cat vanishes,

or has it acquired a new life

   at Nivå Brickworks?

At night I hear it calling…

Search for it, search again the next day.

Live in a vacuum, while my father

looks for another farm,

but learn in sun and dust to cycle,

shoot myself forward like a mainspring,

   ever further out

on Vibevej, along the residential gardens.

Lilacs, laburnums,

an olfactory orgy to sweep past.

Shall I vanish like the cat,

for there is no one to play with,

   and over the summer

I lose

    tooth after tooth in my hollowed hand.

When my mother takes an afternoon nap

with no hands on the clock 

the first one falls out,

   white,

but leaving

      a bloody hole

the tongue’s tip wants to drill down into

– instead of calling, speaking.

Taste of iron in the mouth. Blood words.

Cave language. Tongue pit.

A tooth

   white

as a daisy growing in the grass

in the garden of the house we rent

   and under whose roof my mother in the rain

now and then sings

                      "Solitude Road".

In the house with creaky stairs

and smells of strangers

   there is a studio

we may not enter, my sister and I,

   there I seek refuge –

sit for hours on the floor, contemplate

the radiant pictures’

                  vanishing grey.

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Salamander Sun

Salamandersol, Pia Tafdrup's latest collection of poetry, contains one poem for each year of the poet's life. Here's a translation of the first poem.

JOY

First is joy,

  smuggled across the border

      through a narrow tunnel.

The night is over, drowned in the sea

  buried in the ground,

      thousands of years passed alone.

Smells that already existed,

  closely surround,

       horses snort in the barn.

Wake with light,

  see shadow-play on the wallpaper

       hear birds in bushes and ivy.

The  grown-ups’ voices and laughter,

  a safe landing place

       on the other side of the wall.

First is the morning garden

  in sun,

       its illumination of the heart.

Apples fall in the warm grass,

  insects rise

       up from flowers’ petal depth.

First is openness,

  that soon closes,

       faceless.

First is trust,

  that is easily swallowed

       by galactic fear.

First is  joy,

  that newborn flows

       towards the world, dreams it.

Then follows grief, then follows anger,

  then someone says:

    –  Peace be with it.

Life is death that is coming,

  but first is joy.

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Chaconne

By Lassi Nummi


1

I would like to begin as if unnoticed – not right now or a little earlier,
also not later; neither with this particular subject, nor with something else:
I would like to begin as animals gods and children begin, as love begins, that which is told about –
not as: "do I really dare?” or "did I interpret the shine in your eyes correctly?" or "do you know that your resistance is crumbling?"
but as the waves, the trees of the forest, and the wind – the most transient, most everlasting. I would like the thoughts
to break unnoticed into words, and so that each has time to take root
in the soil of silence, where they will blossom alone. I would like the words to turn into speech as if by a whim of chance, and the speech into song, and the song into a song without words,
and the wordless song dissolve into music, and the music to flow over our heads towards silence. At its edge I would like to draw black lines, not very many,
about something that has occurred to me – or that I have supposed might occur to me -- or that might
occur to me, as we sit with our friends on a honeyed autumn evening.


2


I have written many strange songs on strange subjects.
Today I am going to write a serious song on a serious subject.
My theme is your ear. I have researched it, grown thoroughly acquainted with it,
studied it from every angle in streaming light and twilight and semi-darkness
against the grapevine; when you are speaking, laughing, or when you are silent;
when tea is brought in. In a moment of music, a moment of hubbub, or when everyone is simultaneously silent
and the distant murmur of the streets is borne on the evening air through open windows.

3

Your ear – it is white, but not marble-like; I would say that everywhere in it a warm rosy shading can be observed. A slender labyrinth of furrows and bulges
– I deliberately use emphatic diction – thus acquires a deeper, more human content
through the affinity with
organic nature, transience and the brilliance of moments. Towards it many things
gather, and its time is short; gleaming as its backdrop
it has the gold of your hair.

Towards, past it your hair
is gathered through a golden comb in a bob at the back of your neck:
the morning fresh swell glitters, through which, quite close to the shoreline, gleam
shellfish or the white labyrinth of coral.

Near it your face is gathered – this almost motionless and very lively face,
This Greek and Asian face, unconscious of its consciousness, closed in its clarity – face of the Goddess of Mercy, Mary, Diana
This face of a birch tree, a maiden, a girl reflected in a pond, this white-stemmed face,
born from the smile of Artemis, smile dissolved back into a spring, born as Artemis,
born as Diana

Towards it voices are gathered – a sea’s thundering and whispering voices:
the hubbub of the city’s sea, the hubbub of the park’s sea of leaves, which the giant seashell of the house
repeats; the house’s hubbub, the laughter and uproar and talking and whispering and music
and the cry of a ship far away; the rustling of foliage, as if some brown god
were silently watching us.
Your ear’s shell rests
on the shore of the sea of voices. But silence has grown within its heart like a pearl.


4

Now I will tell you what I have thought this honeyed evening, autumn-honeyed,
among our noisy and sincerely many-faceted friends. I have thought: if my hand were to pluck
the flowers of your skin, it might stop and with closed eyes wake up and listen
to the streams, the brooks, the veins’ pulse, the soil’s pulse and the silence and swell of your heart. Into itself it might gather you, every voice
and everything that is silent. On the seashore the seashell opens to the thunder of the surf.

5

I know that the moon is rising. The shutters are opened
in the rooms that face the moon’s rising; or perhaps it was just a door. The Asian gods of my father's house
smile at the touch of the moonlight. Often, on hearing them murmur to one another,
I have intervened in their talk. Once – I must have been twelve at the time – I said to the Healer of Eye Diseases:
"Oh, teach me to see!" And when they were silent, I said angrily:
"You turban-head you could very well
take me to the God of War and Riches and order him to run me through with his sword
and let my family die out with me – provided you take this cataract and let me
look for a few moments into the heart of existence!"— Then for the first time I saw the gods’ faces fall:
in amazement they stared at me from their pedestals; disapproving, severe, stiff, or thoughtful;
but the God of Fertility had turned away, trying in vain to hide his bronze smile.

6


The Buddha is so heavily gilded, and on the topmost shelf: I do not speak to him – let him sit on his private lotus
and let the river roll by. – But you, God of Fishing, who keep watch near the shore
with your vigilant nets – I talk to you: could you not fill our house with invisible water so that the fish would swim everywhere in our midst – turn our speech into fishes, so that my words would leave my lips
and swim towards her hair – seaweed, golden sand, amidst which the contours of shell or coral are dimly visible?


7

You stir slightly, your hair flickers. I know: the moon is rising. They said just now
that Venus has fled Taurus and entered the figure of Aquarius, which is really
far more dangerous.
The moon is rising. Wild vine covers the house. The troubled brightness of the preludes
rises up the leaves like dew. The music is turned on, and the wind that flows in
behind it wakens the gods to listen.
Oh, what I would give, if everything were to stop now!
Only the music would flow on, and we would float with it, until we awoke in a network
of wild vine
wild vine growing through us.
– Dew, the brightness of the preludes. The moon is rising
between and above the wild vine. The leaves are flickering. Wild vine covers
the houses and covers the hearts, our bold, childish and trembling hearts.

The music has stopped. The pagodas rise from the twilight. Something new has caught on its fingertips the bird of your gaze.

8

The ivory goddess from Himalaya has raised her light hands.
The two at the top hold a lotus, each their own,
in a divine balance with her head and on a level with her girlish face.
A third supports the cloak, lightly wards off, on a level with her breasts..
A fourth, lower down, points, as if approving.
When you understand the posture
its frozen movement comes to life: even if the moon were not shining on the ivory-white skin,
you would see it moving and hear the music through the movements. I, at last, would understand the music
even without seeing the sculpture, as the light that rises from within your face
and melts into the semi-twilight of the moon; as the silence that thickens around you, until
the hand’s light movement is ripe to release, the gaze to brush the distance,
to shine forth, a half-unconscious laughter, like the chiming of the ankle-ring when the dance suddenly dies.

9

I know that the way, the truth and the life open in the moonlight as the nocturnal lotus flower opens.
But I have been taught to be sceptical. When I search for the truth, I find fossils,
characters, corals, the skeletons of hieroglyphics that have passed away; to reconstruct
the spark of life
into them – and in general – requires a talent for alchemy. -- On the other hand I have been raised
to search for wisdom, which is not so much waking or sleep than a continual awakening
from sleep to consciousness, from waking to a sleep that is permeated by consciousness: a tightrope semi-sleep-
walker, whom the images of two worlds bruise and entice:
a wind that towers to the heights and the depth of the ravine. – Raised to study
the mysteries, not so much in order to solve them as to learn the right way to approach
the kernel of the riddle: to listen to the humming, to attain the pearl.
– The Asian gods
smile doubtfully. Without grain and signs, lifeless, they reminisce about the man
about whom my mother talks: years before he went to follow the Lord Jesus Christ,
he raised in place of the gods on his altar the signs of heaven and earth.
I have not learned how to write them, but I love the golden grain and the wind
and I know that something of immortal beauty, vanishing and eternal,
is between them.

My earth-dream, my heaven-dream narrate it over an abyss, and the piercing wind takes my tears.


10

Have I told you that my heart once heard your heart’s shy speech
and now cannot distinguish the thundering voices of the world’s sea through it?
For that reason everything in me gathers into you. If you gather all this
into your pearly brilliance, will you one day repeat these voices like a far, forgotten sea?


11


I have wanted to tell you all this, and also less, this honeyed autumn evening
when our friends have gathered to celebrate the moon, which blesses their marriage, and endless sonatas are played
and talk is unrestrained and tea is drunk, to conceal the true nature of the ritual
and make the evil spirits go astray; I have wanted to say
that everything in me is gathered in you, and sings.
-- This painful secret
you have known of course, and we have talked about it; or might I have caressed it
into your hair? and might you have danced it for me?
But today it is new, reborn – as all true secrets and enigmas are reborn
over and over again: not to be solved, but to be realized and approached.
So approach its essence
and touch it.

I know that these years are vanishing,
have almost already slipped out of my hands. The moon has risen. Everything is ending
almost before it has begun. Look, the wild wine withered
and burst into clusters. The foreign voices
descended on its leaves like dust.


12

Hellene or barbarian – I do not know. This sense of change and flux, and this sense of changelessness and stasis
will always survive. I am perhaps a European, and I ought to understand
the demands of the age, serious business, commercial prosperity, or compensation for oppression
in new-fangled arrangements where that
term is not used. Or I am Asian,
arrived with a wandering nomadic tribe, here grown decadent: reciting spells, stimulating oneself into ecstasy,
conjuring past and future; meat curing over the sides of the saddle; opening the door to the non-existent garden
and submitting.

Are wreaths being made
for the wine festival? Dionysus, spirit of music,
is he is in our midst? Do flutes glimmer
everywhere, from mountains and ravines, stimulating us to processions and dances, into a wild ecstasy,
until we are ripe to fall on our faces
before the mystery?
Or does Apollo gesture
from further away, from a landscape of midday and majestic light -- raising the lyre,
playing his white peace through us?

The Asian gods
are watching us. Between the leaves I think for a moment I have attained a shining gaze
full of hidden meaning.

The gods of my country gaze from the heavy memorial tree group
at the sacred innocence of the birch trees, as the mist rises, the dance of the forest nymphs,
dissolving back into the spring.

I do not know, I do not know.
I know that I have seen the smile of Aphrodite rising white-stemmed
from the gold-glittering foam, where the corals the shells the clams happily conceal
their secret.

13

I would like to end as if imperceptibly. I would like my speech to slowly dissolve into
music, the music to dissolve into the light, into the silence of the light that streams through the doors.
As if you were already gone, all of you gone, the rooms filled with a pearl-brilliant silence,
the shutters forgotten, the moon descending,
with a curtain of dewdrops covering the sleeping wild wine.

"Here the country palace is empty, empty as a dream..."

In the semi-dusk of the moonlight the gods are staring. But they are only black lacquered wood
and the images of our fears and our desires; and we are skin, blood, dreams
and bone. Everything is in flux. And yet: there is the truth, and the way. It begins in the moonlight before my front steps,
and if I go on a journey without taking anything with me, bowing to the gods and praying to the Lord Jesus Christ,
there is a fleeting hope that I shall get back before I am seventy, and when I perceive I have completed the round trip
I would understand that I know less and am closer to the truth that lives in the circle’s hidden centre.


14


You sleep in the chamber of my anxiety. I pray. Then I bow to kiss
the cowrie shell the sea has brought. The curtains flicker. The world’s pearl ceiling
bends over us and repeats the echoes. We listen, and we are listened to
we are the cowrie shell, we are the sea. We dissolve into the world and the world into us.
We are the wild vine and the dew, we are the brightness of the preludes, we rest in the world’s gastropod
which shuts everything out, but repeats the voices of an unknown distant ocean.



[from Taivaan ja maan merkit (Marks of Sky and Earth), 1956]


translated from Finnish by David McDuff