Runoja

[reino virtanen kuusankoskelta]

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

– Seamus Heaney

[pidetään symposium]

Sokko

Minä kuljin silmin peitetyin
ja itseni köyhäksi luulin.
Mut sadun lintujen suhinan
öin päivin ylläni kuulin.

Pois riistin verhon ma silmiltäin,
ja ne valoa ahmien joivat -
mut ikävöin havinaa siipien,
jotka sokean yllä soivat.

Oi sitokaa silmäni uudestaan!
rakas mulle on pimeän taakka.
Nyt tahdon silmin peitetyin
minä kulkea hautaan saakka.

(Elina Vaara)

[anteeksi maalaissuteni]

Kuolematonta elämänviisautta:

Why so pale and wan fond lover?
Prithee why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’t move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee why so pale?

Why so dull and mute young sinner?
Prithee why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can’t win her,
Saying nothing do’t?
Prithee why so mute?

Quit, quit for shame, this will not move,
This cannot take her;
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her;
The devil take her!

Sir John Suckling. 1609–1642

[partaalla]

Kailaalta jo tullutkin hienoja otteita. Tässä lisää:



MUSTA SATU

Olin pieni poikanen.
Tätä mustaa ja hirmuista satua silloin,
joka teki niin suureksi pimeyden,
minä pelolla ajattelin illoin:

"Se kulkee hiipien
ja ottaa lasten sieluja yöllä,
se ruhtinas mustien siipien,
joll' Eedenin käärme on vyöllä.

Ja kupeilta äitien
se heidät, vuoteilta viattomuuden,
vie unessa poluille pimeyden,
himon, rikoksen juhliin ja alhaisuuden.

Pahan saavat he siemenen
siten sieluunsa, syyttään ja tietämättään.
Se, salassa juurtuin ja versoen,
on kerran vahvempi heidän kättään."

Nyt taas minä muistin sen.
Se tulee tunnonvaivojen illoin,
satu musta, siivillä pimeyden -
ja on kuin Saatana naurais silloin.



PARTAALLA

Minä pelkään huoneessani.
Minä pelkään ikkunaa
ja ihmisvarjoja, joita
kuin liskoja, matelijoita
se seiniin heijastaa.

Minä pelkään katsoa oveen.
Ovi aukee pimeään –
ripa kääntyä vois ja tulla
ne joille ei nimiä mulla,
ne joita mä unissa nään...

Ja myöskin seiniä pelkään.
Näen äkkiä vavahtain:
nehän mitään eivät kestä,
nehän ketään eivät estä –
ovat himmeä seitti vain.

Kuin vieraan hengitys, yöllä
joka lapsen säikyttää,
niin lävitse seinieni,
minut nauliten vuoteelleni,
Jokin hiipii, jota en nää.

Hänen – Kauhean läsnäolon
minä tunnen. Tunnen sen.
Ja henkiä vartiossa
on huoneessani, jossa
minä enää elä en.

Ja tuskin hengitänkään.
Olen jähmetys, pelko vain.
Sana äänetön: Armahtakaa!
Sokon tuijotus luomien takaa
yli kaikkeus-ulappain,

jotk' ajatukseni vasta
tänä hetkenä aavistaa.
Hätäsignaali: Missä, missä
on väylä löydettävissä?
Ja onko Jumalaa? –

Ei kukaan, kukaan vastaa.
– Kuin vierelle vuotehen
kävis Kuolema otaa nostain.
Kuin kaukaa, kaukaa jostain
sois pauhina kuilujen.

[pidetään symposium]

Nicanor Parra:

Kukaan ei ole koskaan nähnyt
kuollutta poliisia kadulla
tästä on pääteltävä
että ne kuolevat sängyissään
ei tietenkään voi väittää
että ne olisivat kuolemattomia

[Hexa]

Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.



(Raymond Carver)

[minerva]

PORTIT

Kaksi porttia on kuolemalla.

Ensimmäinen, jonka taakse mennään
välitilaan, varttomaan, että
sammuu kaikki, ketkä meitä muistaa,
aivot, joitten komeroissa yhä
elämme, ei syöden eikä juoden,
muutenkin jo muuttuneina miltei
kieropeilin kuvan kaltaisiksi,
vapauteen melkoiseen jo silti
siirtyneinä, irti vaivoistamme,
maininnoitten yltämättömissä,
kuulettamatta parjauksen kieltä.

Toisen portin taakse astut silloin
kun ei muistajaa, ei lasta eikä
lähimmäistä eikä tuttavaa,
jonka tajunnassa ehkä liikuit
äsken vielä. Nyt se portti painuu
viimeinkin umpeen; aivan hiljaa,
huomaamatta silmän yhdenkään
siirryt lopulliseen. Olet vapaa.

(Aaro Hellaakoski)

[Heitä sikaa/filth]

^^Carver

[Pömbetuk]

Either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you

when I was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.
I was hard as granite, I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.

I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted, jailed, in and
out of fights, in and out
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at, I had no male
friends,

I changed jobs and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.

peace and happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
and
addled
mind.

but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't different

from the
others, I was the same,

they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.

cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less I needed
the better I
felt.

maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.

I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.

I re formulated
I don't know when,
date, time, all
that
but the change
occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that I was a
man,

I didn't have to prove
anything.

I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.

I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.

I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, 'I am going
to have to let you go'

'it's all right' I tell
him.

He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children,
expenses, most probably
a girlfriend.

I am sorry for him
he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporarily,
anyhow.

(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.

I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels, breasts,
singing,the
works.

(don't get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of
itself-
this is a shield and a
sickness.)

The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I didn't fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
I luxuriated in them,
I made them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw, almost
handsome, yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares, lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a baby's
butt.

and finally I discovered
real feelings of
others,
unheralded,
like lately,
like this morning,
as I was leaving,
for the track,
i saw my wife in bed,
just the
shape of
her head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the dead and
the dying,
the pyramids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there in the
room, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the tote board waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of my
wife's head,
she so still,
I ached for her life,
just being there
under the
covers.

I kissed her in the
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and empty
of
people,
I saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me
-Bukowski,charles, let it enfold you

[pidetään symposium]

Chimako Tada: Tuuli

人ごみのなかで
風が私を吹きぬける
私はひとつの管
そしてやがてひとつの音
眼をとじたホルンから
すべり出て
しずかに大都会を吹きぬける

Väkijoukossa
Tuuli puhaltaa lävitseni
Olen putki
Ja lopulta ääni
Joka liukuu
Silmänsä sulkeneesta torvesta
Ja puhaltaa hiljaa kaupungin lävitse

[pidetään symposium]

Kenji Miyazawa: Bambut ja tammet

Tuskaako?
Jos se on tuskaa
niin sateella
haluaisin bambujen ja tammien metsään
     (Leikkaa tukkasi)
haluaisin bambujen ja tammien vihreään metsään
     (Leikkaa tukkasi
     sen takia saat tuommoisia päähäsi
     kun sinulla on tuommoiset hiukset)

[pidetään symposium]

Luen Oodin "poetry"-hyllystä kaiken maailman kitaraboomereiden biisintekstikokoelmien seasta umpimähkään poimittua Carol Ann Duffya ja kylläpä on tekstiä.

Small female skull

With some surprise, I balance my small female skull in my
  hands.
What is it like? An ocarina? Blow in its eye.
It cannot cry, holds its breath only as long as I exhale,
mildly alarmed now, into the hole where the nose was,
press my ear to its grin. A vanishing sigh.

For some time, I sit on the lavatory seat with my head
in my hands, appalled. It feels much lighter than I’d thought;
the weight of a deck of cards, a slim volume of verse,
but with something else, as though it could levitate.
  Disturbing.
So why do I kiss it on the brow, my warm lips to its papery
  bone,

and take it to the mirror to ask for a gottle of geer?
I rinse it under the tap, watch dust run away, like sand
from a swimming cap, then dry it – firstborn – gently
with a towel. I see the scar where I fell for sheer love
down treacherous stairs, and read that shattering day like
  braille.

Love, I murmur to my skull, then, louder, other grand
  words,
shouting the hollow nouns in a white-tiled room.
Downstairs they will think I have lost my mind. No. I only
  weep
into these two holes here, or I’m grinning back at the joke,
  this is
a friend of mine. See, I hold her face in trembling, passionate
  hands.

[pidetään symposium]

Tuli eduskunta piirtelygatesta mieleeni yks lemppari.

Wallace Stevens - Six Significant Landscapes, VI

Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses—
As for example, the ellipse of the half-moon—
Rationalists would wear sombreros.