"Down the ages / they conduct their long monologue: / can'y you hear? / They hope for it from others, / wait for ones like themselves, / they were born that way. / And so has the world been arranged / that those others grow weary / and begin to take care of the chores."

"That this time would be another, / but it is, / it is about to go under, every moment. / Facts bleed their color, / see how they break up and dissolve, / their fabric does not last; / you do see, don't you? / Not even your disaster / deserves belief."

"One a child, one old / almost half a century apart // both / need my hand in this city"

"And what about the three-year-old on the beach, in the heather: / "What if I take away the water," sand, rock / "what if I take away the sand, the rock, / the ground, the air, what then, what?""

"Hunkered down out on the spacious ice / coat-hems touching the snow / she slaps her knees, tries to sweet-talk her dog / but it won't come, does not remember its name, / left it there, / she does not remember her own, either, / and here on the shore I keep shouting, in vain."

"Minä elän."

"Now dig my grave Beneath the bay willows' boughs And with blackness cover it over again, There for evermore Go from my domain: I wish to slumber in peace."

"Grove of Tuoni, grove of night! There thy bed of sand is light. Thither my baby I lead. Mirth and joy each long hour yields In the Prince of Tuoni's fields Tending the Tuonela cattle. Mirth and joy my babe will know, Lulled to sleep at evening glow By the pale Tuonela maiden. Surely joy hours will hold, Lying in thy cot of gold, Hearing the nightjar singing. Grove of Tuoni, grove of peace! There all strife and passion cease. Distant the treacherous world."

"To fall asleep in your embrace, Land of our dreams, what bliss, O you our cradle, you our grave, You the new hope we ever crave, Peninsula so beautiful, Finland for aye our all!"

"What is that land of hill and dale That is so beautiful, The land aglow with summer days, Land with the northern lights ablaze, Whose beauty all the seasons share, What is that land so fair? There many thousand lakes are bright With twinkling stars at night There many kanteles resound And all around make hillsides sing And on the golden heath firs ring: That is the Finnish land."