Quite Quite Another Eternity
Translated from Finnish by C.B. Hall in cooperation with the author
Originally published as Ihan toinen iankaikkisuus, Otava 1991
1.
An empty screen,
the rooftops' sheet-metal nights;
and the sky's tepidness!
Thus
I wanted to fly, slowly, that I might be
anywhere
at once.
2.
hinges of grief,
smoky candles of forgetting,
the shoulder of evening, a trifle pained
3.
I walk out to buy cigarettes.
Morning swallows fog.
The trees on the promenade feel cold.
I come across the yard to the house,
inside a radio drones
as if I were speaking to myself.
4.
From the years
which I spoke
answering
and asking
mist from the sea and
the fragrance of a dried-out rose
from large rooms where the doors drift open
5.
Again sometimes
a past while's
touch
the flight of a swift,
swift,
short like
forgetting
the sinking consolation of words
I summon the evenings to visit
somewhere deep within me
just like a person's picture
summer-sick, bright
6.
Look: the trees, only half their trunks in the shadow;
from the yard, resolute steps: as if carrying the mail.
7.
Back and
forth
in the mind August
words still move: something
has been taken in from the rain
I see that grass is green
but autumn already!
possible to say anything
and necessary! your liberty!
the wind's,
swept away
8.
I address you
from the eye of stillness
still
I see you
in the darkness of the summer esplanade
only
still
I read your steps
in the quivering air
still
only
harder
than the hardening stillness
is
still
still
only hardening stillness
still
9.
the sea,
you, from the labia twilight, who rise,
as the sky
from your naked boundlessness
these words
from the balconies of your blue itinerant moons
10.
Reality: direct and simple
like a stony wall, calm water
on which the craft of your will glides, strikes
the
wall
the paddle slides from your hand: already you yearn
for
the reflections
11.
in the summer's sky
the same yesterday
clouds lick their wounds
in the light where
autumn's birds
chase each
other
in the same
from which
the light
would not wish to yield
nor will it
12.
You dive to your depths,
you rise to the gods.
In the swarm of the street you greet yourself
or flee,
go home
and pretend to be hiding.
Night watches day, day night;
the eyes beneath your brow, always
stuck in your own
hide.
13.
Conceived a sentence. Memorized it. Forgot.
Here, in the world, thus,
signing it.
14.
For life is long and tall as
and in
its masquerade
Death
is disguised as
Death
15.
And what I wrote I wrote in the water
I wrote:
on the verge of spilling over.
16.
Just as the nocturnal
hedge in the wind appears frightened and frightening
I thought to let my life blow through my self.
17.
The sunny clatter of the masts from among the trees
which today drunk
the yard is surrounded by buildings
the sauna's felt roofing is full of sparrows
one of the cars parked to go
I sit on the porch I'm thinking of disguising myself I'm
here away and from here
18.
The years cast shadows.
For us,
on the bright side of the moon, still
harder to mean.
Said I? Or did I, say? We don't vary much.
19.
From the sea the light
turns to mist, the mist.
I walk past that white house,
then descend on the stony steps.
To the left there is a rock,
brown and open-minded.
I come to the Atlantic.
The sky's shallow bowl, the swallows,
wind,
the shouts of people.
So much, and of everything
that I have been wanting to leave
unfinished.
20.
As the engine of a car entering the yard on a summer evening
would die
and fall silent, you left,
only the wind still moving in the hedge,
only twisting.
21.
This here, that sort of place
where the airplanes fly low
and the parasols are yellow.
Here
you ask the bougainvillaea its secret
and it will reveal it:
the greatest, most wordless:
that, which, because, although, still
there is not.
You'll see it.
22.
On the table: a pack of Gauloises, a pen, something
written down.
Sleep is exercising its veto.
I and thou,
each as far away as the other
thus:
and as if
day and night drink
different wines
from the same transparent glass,
which art one self
23.
A round moon lies on its back atop itself
heavily, lightly.
Night is putting on a glove for the day.
The sea speaks, speaks.
24.
Take me away from here, from among their eyes,
you asked.
In your own voice, your own words.
Against the window sill. In the elevator. In the armchair.
On the rug, in the attic.
Always the Same Place.
Many, many, many little deaths and one big separation.
Long live them all.
I drink the slow farewell toast
not knowing whence I have returned.
25.
Black wine from a yellow mug under the white sky.
Day combs its hair tight, looks, warts in its eyes.
My beloved's voice Morse code from a fettered realm
where it's raining dead horses.
I go past houses and trees, like in a photograph
a man hanged years ago
following his own tracks backwards.
The sheriff's posse crosses the patio of my mind,
I have become a Spaniard, my fingers won't move,
my thoughts are becoming a concrete casting,
I'm done for.
Not even my sleep can save me anymore.
26.
today
the swift-strained air
too full of itself
embraces the grasses of the earth
as if
I didn't dare read what
I might have written
while sleeping to close my eyes
to compare:
time,
lived in moments
nonexistently
27.
you
and I
a message passed
by orchids
a hand,
a heart squeezed by
warmth
eyes spilled
by joy always
stairways climbed by
houses air breathed
by angels
bright like
the crying
between us always
still
some
time the
first, always
28.
You, songs,
those too, which I did not sing,
the messages to the angels,
the letters,
the decades
which I saw folding
in childhood that Thursday, when
the sun itself
peeked out from under its visor,
everything
which I sent and received
and which I said to myself in the doorways,
everything
will be taken away by the greedy, exhausting
embrace of
incomprehensibility
29.
Now, you speak to me in every dream
as if dreaming.
The height of the sky
the smell of summer's hay, a touch, farewells: all things
short-lived,
and for such a long time
30.
You, who are the walker in my sleep.
You, who are night's bright absence.
You, who are never where I'm looking.
Who do not repeat.
You who are always late.
You about whom one does not say "Now!"
who walk behind me in my sleep
right now, somewhere on a forest road, at an airport
in a garden beneath the apple trees
in the elevator
you come to me - I don't know where.
31.
From in back of the woodshed and the Main Ditch, from the woodpile,
from the bus and the brown briefcase and the lanes of birches, from the
dressing room,
from the railroad station halls and the shore of the sea, from red
wine, from wet sheets in a dim room, from the candle pushed
into the mouth of that bottle, from wide-wale corduroys, from kisses in
the crammed vestibule, from tears, from a cigarette which tastes good
and a cigarette which feels as thick as a bottle of
fly poison, from being late for the plane and from spike-tipped shoes
which you didn't wear because someone laughed, from sailboat posters
and those same posters in the studio apartment from which someone has
removed her things and in which the dust is slowly gathering, from
hallucinations (or perhaps you were just imagining) and words,
fragments of words and from too-long sentences, from a capsizing boat,
from deadlines, from a folded countenance and
emptiness, and from the emptiness which drains from you yourself and
which surrounded you on a hillside where low pine grew and from
muteness, from looking away and peacefully looking on while someone
tears her pale flesh in the summer night, from the patisseries and a
thousand gin mills and from a certain spring and from the coat-pegs in the
vestibule, from the rooftops,
from a quiet and noisy lament beneath you and from the sweat and work
and eternal farewells, from eternal farewells you
looked for yourself, a boy, a man and all the time you were behind
yourself like a shadow the size of all the past so that wherever you
looked the sun always shone.
32.
A knee and a book.
Behind the fence a head was walking.
It was summer.
In the surface of the swimming stadium's pool the sun
tossed its hair
and then your caressing mouth was,
there
senseless words
in sensible sentences
33.
and in your eyes
that moment they turned toward me
and simultaneously
were already past: a moment
blue and fast like a bullet
when you came out of the elevator
on the topmost floor
and in through the door, scanned the room, stretched out
your hand in a single,
apprehending motion: let me
hold you,
come to me, touch, it said
and I: take me from the tree as
if I were fruit
falling through
all these watching eyes and
this black and black and suddenly so
constricted life of
mine into
the instant of this fast blue well-shaped glance
hither
34.
The sides of the sled are white-painted veneer
and the grass is covered with frost and
The sun runs for its life
All of a sudden I've become the first-born bastard
son of
the chamberlain
of the Estates of Hell.
35.
The sky's freezing puddles, all along the shores
trees upended.
I am on the way to a speaking point, against which
prying
one gets things right side upside down.
36.
It blows fast and gusty
the wind at that spar-buoy
and the pleading hands
of the island trees
hardly my worried words,
memories
downside-up beneath the wave crests
the groves of forgetfulness, bearing one along -
there
only when you learn to ask
do the answers lack all sense
37.
and suddenly I remembered where you were
a truck from the sanitation department went down the sidewalk,
sanitizing
it was dazzlingly bright, things aloft - nothing to it.
38.
It's that door shaped like you yourself behind which stands everything and nothing. You push at
it. I push at it. You push at it every day and it doesn't open and you can't stop marveling and still
and only when we suddenly decide to pull towards us we can't stopping marveling how this
honor is just for me.
39.
in eternity
I imagine
we will look
into yesterday
through the mirror of
yesterday
as one would glance
out the window into the yard
at the apple tree and well
40.
A girl in a turquoise skirt climbing the stairs against the white wall pushes a long popsicle into
her red mouth. She brings to my mind words which I understand but whose language I don't
know. I'd like to explain why I find it sad that this is not a dream. A dream it is not that I'd like
to explain why it's sad. Sad is the fact that I'd like to explain how a girl, pushing popsicle into
her mouth red, is climbing against a wall, white, in a skirt turquoise.
I understand, I'd like to explain, but I don't have the words. Perhaps I have died.
Perhaps.
41.
At the edge of the late-evening field shouts shouts
shouts: Come in now!
Suddenly there as if the bright air had yielded
to a black fold
escorted by the firs' faithful pluton.
Who is it? Does it see
through me
and
what I do?
The man torn from the wall of the barn
suspenders on his hips
can't come closer
or withdraw
without disappearing at once.
Who does it know itself to be,
father, look,
me,
goose-stepping behind the others
a hill bristling
between the firs.
42.
you
who call from afar, from a pay phone, collect,
who are the height of the sky and night's contractions,
you
who are the logarithms of coincidence,
who buy, sell and pledge,
you
who never believe what you see,
who will never be counted on my fingers,
you
who look back when I look back,
who read me like an unwritten book,
you
who are the gravity of your breasts on my lips,
whose apples ripen in the night's garden,
you
whose shadow casts shadows,
who dream with eyes wide,
you
who eat the sperm of my years,
who press the heart,
you
who will not be there in the photograph I am expecting,
who will forever be young,
you
taking your hat off,
ringing the doorbell,
you
nonexistent indestructible soulless,
whose name is a name is a name is
you
43.
and you
you
you my thirst
and my
thirst's
bursting vessel
44.
who are the walker in my sleep,
who
are the walker in my dream,
who are the walker in my
sleep,
you,
who are not me.
45.
On the restaurant's table the prayer meeting of the
Windsor chairs, overturned, legs toward heaven,
A house-sized pen which in the city of sleep
writes on my retina;
a crack between the thighs of the moon, the chafing shoe
of midnight, the hepatomas of words,
life-long verses. The cuticle of thinking.
The hairs of memory. The window's knife-thrust,
a brief history of sleep, the tooth decay of Time and
the brass rail of inevitability,
death's customer discount, a sliced guitar and
the eyelashes of light and
death's customer discount, a sliced guitar and
the eyelashes of light
46.
From the temple of pain you take your hand behind night's back,
unhooking, undressing.
Without touching night's bannisters you go through
its floodgates,
sexless,
eyes shut, eyes closed: encountering
the sisters of dawn, the moon's city cousins
more tender-footed:
on the pillows of their pulse quietly tossing, mascara and all
greedy for the linen closets of their flesh
in the pleats of their dimensions eager
for a halt: rough-nippled
(and with your fingers you spread the fingers, getting a grip)
you reach for a cigarette and (as for the
blinds) you suck in, you breathe consciously
(in, out) in
order to know: again: they brush
you
with powder, on your day's powdery
skin
47.
The trees are awfully dense and flat-roofed.
On the topmost balcony, from which you were just looking,
there is now a man - or a very ugly woman.
He considers this landscape beneath him,
and stands scratching his hairy belly.
And speaks.
And talks.
Don't ask for an explanation.
I don't know how
to signify what he
means any
more.
Yet
48.
On a table in my workroom:
das Ding an Sich,
Soulagement
A pavingstone brought from Lisbon, white.
I take it in my hand and carry it to the window.
I look out over the roofs into the evening sky.
I too know
that all peoples cry in the same language
in that Franz Ferdinand Kafkaesque pit.
49.
Nine straight storm-nights I slept, hatless,
hanging from my feet
from your whimsical womb
O fate!
The dry fire of your arms' longing
burned and cleansed me
and I dove,
a bird,
wings closing in
five, fifteen
in-closing years
you rained salty sparks
a pant of seasons settled
with delay
it became sleepless
I became
a ventriloquist fish
swimming in a tumult of instants.
50.
The music shuts its mouth
In my head the telephones starts to ring
once
at a time, and
a final matter
No-one
answers
51.
No more smokes
Got to keep an eye on the clock
The telephone is brooding
crouching
I ask, how
on earth
things in reality
are
52.
No mail came, good
A matter of chance, yes
that too
I'll call at two, then,
from here in the world
here the sun is shining
there's dust on the table on the balcony
it's today:
just like
in eternity
53.
The eraser of the air, the triple-jump of shingle roofs
towards the water
and the trees erect, the stones the cooler winds
the masts again wobblier, listen, I
riding here, on the left, side of that of time which we call
tide
54.
hardly
ever but,
but although
here,
closer
a little,
more,
and gone
if
and
the nightfall,
clouds, though
words
too,
but
eyes, eyes eyes
the skin of water,
flashing
the sky, the earth, the sea: entities of
blackness,
and the hands,
stroking,
and the tabletop,
the door,
all one's own
O!
and words,
black,
but
one's own
though, ever, stillness,
and the scent, lingering, that is
55.
day passes, night, and the silence is sound
a great unshining tree bearing twins
on a line the black wash comes alive, namely
swinging as an instantaneous dog
passes
dark the darkness is and to see
again the stars I want
and what I believe
to see
56.
I awake. You next to me. Neither dark nor light.
No one anywhere can tell what time it is.
57.
O, I remember: the knees,
the breasts, the thighs, eyes skin
enclosing, and the mouth,
opening
in sleep the tracks leading all the way to
heaven,
Ejaculado,
said the black talking-tree,
clouds wafted, hurriedly
the summer darkened to silver
the harvest year, the fifth decade
bright, dancing
to the rhythm of the sky's taut
membranes
in who-knows-where-liberated one's
narrative.
58.
In the summer solstice night we sip your mulled wine
and burn a mute candle
purloined from the future by us,
the harbingers of sleep
the touch
of the cheek against the perineum
and I tell you about the herb garden of my haplessness,
where, and were it not so early already,
there would be a lot more of where I
come from,
and about the scents there
59.
Sleep is the listening air,
the breathing of a house,
the sweat of swallowed sighs.
Sleep is your surrounding sensitivity,
the chalkboard of my clumsinesses,
the ford of our fears.
Sleep is bread, fulfillment and
long sentences of fire
in the darkening window of the mind.
Sleep is yesterday, today, tomorrow
and the way, sweeping one along
like truth itself:
the palms of your being here today,
the smoothness of hairs and
armpits and the light the light and everything,
which today could not be conceived of otherwise.
60.
Underneath my clothes I'm naked,
you say,
I know it.
Behind the mirror there's another room, in which flowers.
I know
that when I turn my back you will strip down there
strip off your clothes, the flowers, your scents even
there you will be the breathing hairs of your night
my daily bread
O naked rose
thou, taken away
and given to me,
and I no longer know what's with the silence.
61.
We sped in your car down roads, roads of the nightless night.
The forest trees spun frantically around their wanting center.
62.
Have I told you, that your smile is ready? Your smile is ready. Your smile is ready for me to tell
you so. Your smile is so ready it's as if I've already told you. The smile. Yours. Is ready. Yes,
your smile is ready.
63.
Daytime again.
If I was to describe this landscape
the wake of a jet would cross its sky.
There'd be birches for you, and alders at the water's edge.
Beneath them I'd want to explain to you
why I feel good.
And it'd be summer. So that
all this would be possible
still.
64.
And how would we pay for a house in the country,
the journeys beyond journeys, the silver of evening
the nocturnal vases and the
bath towels of our mornings?
you ask.
I'm listening, yes.
Me, right here.
Perhaps
I can answer
later in the evening
then, eyes closed, me, that
I've learned to live
with uncertainty
the way the black bird sings
in the black bush
ceaselessly
repeating the same verse.
It's not much.
It's getting dark already,
you're still kindling the fire.
No stars yet, either
Hold my hand, just the same.
65.
what were the drops speaking, the roof
blowing - you went
far away:
to listen: brighter clouds
wafted in the eastern
sky it is again quite
another
eternity
you sit in the window, looking: apple tree and well
66.
I turn out the lights.
In the evening window I read:
Joy had no length.
Grief only its breadth.
Hope is an infinite line
fear a four-dimensional space
in which the future bends
and
measured by twinklings of the eye gets
that Resounding name.
67.
Like the watery horizon, reduced, like handwriting
I would bid you farewell, at last, eternity
68.
And I've seen how the wind in the light scatters the falling water.
And I've seen how the wind in the light scatters the falling bright water.
And I've seen how the wind in the light scatters the falling bright water, into light.
69.
The moon in the sky
in who knows which house
devours a moon-shaped woman
Your touch stays on the skin as if deep perpendicular waters
were flowing
70.
I can do no more than this.
The television's red eye watches, let it watch -
and the chairs are lean and hungry,
let them hold their well-turned phrases, because
and there's a balcony across from me too, although
that I won't explain,
but there isn't anyone there anymore.
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