Finnish Poetry- Tripod

Here are some poems I have found in anthologies. They are all translated from the Finnish but not by me. Some of the poets are still living.

FINNISH POETS Eeva-Liisa Manner (1921- ) ASSIMILATION I will show you a way that I have travelled. If you come If you come back some day searching for me do you see how everything shifts a little every moment and becomes less pretentious and more primitive (like pictures drawn by children or early forms of life: the soul's alphabet) you will come to a warm region it is soft and hazy but then I will no longer be me, but the forest. * * * * * Arvo Turtianen (1904-1980) LOVELIEST POEM The loveliest poem is born when you are close to someone, when tenderness, simple and boundless, without questions flows from one to the other. You do not forget the loveliest poem. It is stamped on your forehead, eyes, lips and heart, stamped for lovers to read, for lovers to surrender. * * * * * * Eeva Kilpi (1928- ) HE STEPPED INSIDE MY DOOR Let me know right away if I'm disturbing you. he said as he stepped inside my door, and i"ll leave the way I came. Not only do you disturb me, I answered, You turn my whole world upside down. Welcome. * * * * * AND DREAMS PALED No sooner had I learned to get along without than I happened to think: I will not give up this person, And the sheets burst into bloom. This is reality, he said, and dreams paled. So that was the kind of force behind those civilized glances that for years we gave each other. * * * * * EVEN NATURE GIVES YOU NO CHOICE When you have seen a cloud in the lap of a pond; and the moon between the waterlilies; inevitably you are at the mercy of your own soul. * * * * * What is this sound that wakens me at night? It is biology, it calls out its rights. At night you can hear it more clearly, when the sociologists are sleeping. * * * * * * Veiji Meri (1928- ) RHYTHM Pitch and quality struggle in our words and rock them back and forth constantly. I flop flat on my stomach on top of them so they won't rise up like any glued corners that have come loose. One continual rocking this language just like this life. When you lie on top of it, it starts to throb like a cushioned woman's heart. Once we breathed together for the same beat for two minutes, until we noticed it. You had a bottle of red wine, I had a schnaps glass of cactus liquor. Is that what gave us the same rhythm? Are we so much different? * * * * * * * Aaro Hellakoski (1893-1952) MOONLIGHT IN THE FOREST Under sleepy branches a strange light shines, in the forest a magic path comes from nowhere, leads nowhere. My shadow fled, I am without body. disolved in moonlight. My step remains suspended in mid-air, My hand touches emptiness. * * * * * * Tommy Tabermann (1947- ) POSSESSIVE LOVE Possessive love arrives, it locks the door behind it and settles in forever, always predictable. Love arrives, it leaves its luggage by the door, in case worse comes to worst, but it still undresses. Passion arrives, first it lights a hundred candles, then pulls the door off its hinges and breaks the windows. Leaves everything, everything to the care of the wind. * * * * * * Arto Mellar (1956- ) PROPORTIONS A person's life: width of a hand I have heard it said I look at the early morning sky: from star to star even less The happiness that you wait for, something that cannot be measured, only possoble if not measured. At sunrise small birds, without bursting, sing out loud the morning dew, the bright sound of countless droplets. * * * * * * Anselm Hollo, born in Finland, but now lives in Colorado, is a faculty member of the Naropa Institute and has translated many Finnish poets into English. HEAVY JARS #6 Given the heavy jar full of all relevant information, he dropped it on the sidewalk and burst out laughing as the container and its contents shattered and scattered in the raging blizzard; he had been on his way to present it to her, for her to dispose of as she wished, but with the surreptitious expec- tation that they might "go through it" together. Now, the absurdity of the understanding had become blatantly apparent, and he vowed to tell the next full moon that he abjured such subterfuge for ever: silence and starkness, these were the perennial conditions of birth, & love & death, the so-called great subjects, the ones no one could ever say anything but the dramatically obvious about. * * * * * * * THE END

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