poets-from-finland

"A LITTLE EPISODE:"

"Vain henkäyksen verran riemus kesti, vain silmänräpäyksen tuskas syvä. Maan helmaan lempeään kuin peltoon jyvä nukahdat hiljaa, uinut suloisesti.Niin Kauneus, min täyden kasvun esti tään elos vajavuus, nyt täydentyvä on kuolemassas, muotoon ylentyvä kukoistavaan ja uuteen tuhannesti.Maa sinut sireenien, niinipuiden suo hautaas haparoiviin valkojuuriin, vie suonet umpuihin, ja suvikuiden.tulessa kukkiin hunajaisiin, suuriin puut puhkeaa – näin untes säteileväin suloista täyttymystä kantaa keväin."

"Mikä olen? Tähdenlento Luojan ikuisessa yössä, tomujyvä aavan aineen lakkaamattomassa työssä.'Mutta sentään! Tahdon antaa hehkun hetkelleni tälle, tahdon loistaa, tahdon laulaa kiitoslaulun elämälle.'Tahdon laulaa: mitä siitä, jos ma lopuin, kussa aloin, mutta silmänräpäyksen valokaarin yössä paloin!'Hetken sykin, liekkisydän, aurinkona maailman oman tunsin kauneuden kaipuun, rakkauden rajattoman.'Alistukaa, avaruudet, pienen tähden välkynnälle! Tahdon loistaa, tahdon laulaa kiitoslaulun elämälle."

"After days of demon drink"

"Nyt varjo vain on edessäni elon matka. Ja takanain on tuskan tie, se jot’ en jatka.'Mun takanain on kevät alla julman kirren. Sen elää sain, sain kynnykselle suvivirren.'Sen mukanaan vei käsi kallis, kylmentyvä. Nyt suven maan nään sydämessä hauta syvä."

"Are they human beings? Ask from those who have flown through the fires of hell if the red-Russkies are humans! Our boys outright deny it!"

"Ilmari Kianto is best known for his humorous depictions of rural life in Finland"

"Despite the fact that it is quite obvious, EU leaders do not want to admit that they will lose to America and China, superpowers with strong economies in the West and the East, if they do not come together with, or, at least, improve relations with Russia."

"By the way, the leader of any country does likewise. In the West, there is a great excuse: 'We are spreading freedom and democracy around the world.' The United States uses it at all times, even in wars, waged in its own interest."

"Suppose Russia falls apart. Thousands of refugees will huddle together at the Finnish border. This is one of the reasons I want Russia to remain a strong power. Who else could be in such a position other than Putin, who in Finland is repeatedly painted black as a monster?"

"Two writers who have gone the furthest from their proletarian starting points are Hannu Salama and Samuli Paronen. In regard to both its structure and its perceptions, Salama's epic prose is unsurpassed. From the point of view of the lowest and poorest societal strata the very individualistic Paronen created a body of work that has proved to be remarkable, even as criticism of civilisation."

"It was told that when God long ago created Sipirja he settled it by the river and trampled the path nearby the houses: go wanderer, stay a while but not longer! In the houses of Sipirja people speak their own language so that no stranger can understand what they say; it remains unexplained. They are like mute, armless, eyeless and there is not heart in any one’s chest, only the possessed and lashed flesh. When a stranger comes to the village of Sipirja, they despise him like an animal and they laugh at his speech, and all the old painful things and injustices which everyone has suffered sometimes are exposed. Children and old hags stare after him when he has left, they imitate his speech and the way how he walked and moved his arm, and they say: a creature like that! so ugly! They ask the stranger inside and they fill his cup with delicious coffee and urge to drink, but when he is gone they speak about him with despise: a creature like that!"

"As a child I was helpless and filled with trust, but now I am fortunately sick with fear and filled with distrust. Now I am sharp-sighted, but then I was stupid and blind goose, and I had to experience it over and over again."

"It would be madness to imagine that I or anybody else has private thoughts, private and independent: the self is the sum of the understanding the self, only when I can understand that there is also you, I can perceive my deeds and to be."

"Timo Mukka (born 1944) is a very individual author; he can be frankly romantic and writes at times a directly poetic prose, but he also describes, in a realistic manner, rootless modern life and presents a slightly surrealistic but very efficient satire of all the brutality and stupidity of the present-day world."

"There are lots of words -"

"The border cracks open facing Asia and the East."

"My house rose overnight."

"Eikö olisi oikeaa tuomiotaktiikkaa ottaa joku prosentti vihollisen toisestakin sukupuolesta – siten siveellisesti varoittaakseen niiden kurjia ammattisisaria. Sudenjahdissa kelpaa maalitauluksi juuri naarassusi ehkä enemmän kuin uros, sillä metsästäjä tietää, että naarassusi synnyttää pahoja penikoita, joista on oleva ikuinen vastus. Todistettu on, että Suomen kansalaissodassa punakaartilaiset ovat petoja, monet heidän naisistaan – susinarttuja, vieläpä naarastiikereitä. Eikö ole hulluutta olla ampumatta petoja, jotka meitä ahdistavat."

"Driving through rain with you, / in a sea of rain / I saw only the bridges, their railings, / the passing lanes, / when the earth rose into my eyes / I heard, I heard that I had loved."

"Stood there who knows how long looked / at the clouds the hedge / when someone came out of the door it was her daughter."

"They speak their loud dialects, / Sicilians, Sardinians, / Calabrians, / they all have their own taverns. / At the other end of the alley, / on the other side / a quiet spot, / waiters and patrons at tables, / their faces, hairdos / out of Pompeii's frescoes. / Large eyes look at us, / the door does not open out, / it opens in."

"When you grow to become visible in the world / and build a nest / above your head / there are times when you fly up there / and it is light and swims in the air"

"War is time that has marched through the mind, and is later presented in"

"Life was given to man"

"The others got heart, I got the harp."

"I sang to my dear dead mother"

"BLUE CROSS: Lord, great are my woes, / greater are your deeds, / do not think of me, / remember the unbaptised! // The Lord heard the bright one's cry, / he gave a sign, changed the girl / to a blue cross-tree ..."

"TUURI: Let not evermore, / let the gods celebrate / with mortal people! / The gods have long festivals, / man's life is fleeting, / swift as a wheel's turn ..."

"YLERMI: The church will fall down before / the mitten parts from the stone! / The walls will crumble before / the finger rots on the wall! / Before that, may a time come / too, another, harsher time / which will not bow down to death, / will not crawl off to Mana. // He spurred the horse, and the flames / engulfed his golden helmet. / The mitten's on the stone still."

"Hark! My ears are catching corncrake’s clicking,"

"LAPLAND SUMMER:"

"Outbursts blossom in Lapland rapidly"

"Lapissa kaikki kukkii nopeasti,"

"When the early morning sun"

"From his hole so wet and drenching"

"For the poet Aaro Hellaakoski there was 'negative fire' in the steely blue skies of winter."

"LAPIN KESÄ:"

"The sea raises you to your feet. And dead calm. Strands of light hold your hand. Now you have left this shore. Now you are in the wind of an invisible sail."

"The nights are no longer warm,"

"FOG: Fog covers this region. / Can you still hear my voice? / I don't understand trees. / They try to grab our hair. / A branch has fallen on you. I know that. / Could you look behind me: / is there a load / on my back, as well?"

"IN THE SUN: Sickle moon still there in daylight. // We long for things as they were. / We want them back, / our blue-black nights, and the stars."

"THE DESCENT: Faster I travel into the cold of the mountain / than I return from it. / One can't see the sun. / Wait, I come closer / as beside me the frozen snow / dwindles."

"OPEN: Gnats, too, are partly / air / and the swarming of seagulls / at the wind's mercy / inchoate / I walk / in front and between myself / in, out / abrupt and weary, an old heavy gate / I beat my own lintel to pieces."

"When I hate so much / that my eyes no longer close, / when I love so much / that I move, eyes open / close, far, without effort / not naming the country, the wind's evil"

"Without moving anything / I want to see / the way this autumn / makes the birds move."

"Up down / on summer's lake / the flying ant / finds a wall in the air"

"I lower the bill of my cap stop looking / thoughts ready to go / sit in this train that's as long as the journey"

"In the restaurant, eyes / above a soup bowl's rim / Is it she? / Changes shape, is and is not. / Now she's spat out a bit of bone, / I don't think it's her, / I'm leaving, I'm done eating. / This is a long and mad journey: / I see her on the faces of others, my own."

"I was reading the Book of Job. / People I knew came and went, / I read their book, / the seasons turned away, / I had been reading for a long time. / I was quiet. Not a single leaf to be seen. / I looked up: it had gone dark on me, / that star / in the middle of the sentence: // Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?"