A selection of ten poems

 

By-- Esa Mäkijärvi

”But words – words are not enough!”
- Klaus Kinski

 

1. Night glasses

In the night glasses the water stays, the surface shivers,
runs as the natural light touches the surface
and passes the water without touching it,
in the night glasses the water stays, it’s surface shivers,
something drives by as the movement forces us to the
same pace and somehow we can’t stand still,
in the night glasses the water stays, together they can’t stay,
touches the pure surface without a trace that
they are moved by the same thing as us by the same time.

 

2. Wall of light

You have four walls covered with light,
how the difficult, white flame of beauty is covered
by many burning black lights, and how do feel

those who in the light of the moon draw with ink to the bone,
the dark instrument, when the breastbone is played with
sensitive fingers, to the moon, which throws us

with its light throws us with its light.

 

 

 

3. The flowers

The flowers arrived today, they pretended and flaunted with their colors and love.

They have only little time. They wait for fading and their existence is soft.

 

4. I’ve seen the roses stripped

I’ve seen the roses stripped; their beauty is not the same
from the below as from the top,

their lukewarm red has mortality in it
and the two sides of the rose live in between two eternities

ever fearing which side triumphs,
the red veins full of moving or stopped blood,

the opening of roses is like heavens; the give their unbelieavable
beauty and then stop.

 

5. The flickering of the light

Sleep a little more
like I sleep, a long winter’s sleep, you can’t know if I am dead
or only dreaming.

 

 

6. A light

 

If the light goes out there will be no more light
but maybe that is just what makes a ligh-
t so

(the cold poetry that climbs the thigh)

and precisely at that moment the mystery of ligh-
t begins to solve itself when a man looks
at the end of his hand and counts his fingers.

 

 

 

7. A dream vision

Today I’m the full sleep of your death,

I am filled with the blue feeling of a dream,

full of the blueness of wind and will,

today I’m the full sleep of your death.

 

8. We sit here lonely although there are two of us

The petals of your eyelashes floated at the surface of the
fountain like two lonely pupils fallen out of your blue eyes

and I picked them up with two hands. You blew to my hair
when it couldn’t keep up with you. I remember when

you hanged to my every word like they were treasures

and the ochre of your fringes fell down the stairs one step at a time.
I wanted to take your black spots to a spoon,

carry them away and eat them in the frost of the evening.
The fountain threw water to the sky and to our shoulders,

your hair were a wet dream that no one else would never find out,
last night I sleeped alone:

if I were a watch I’d stop visiting you.

9. Of the possibility of love

The minds grains dry up on the rafter
creating mute flutes
to a strange world.

10. Unpleasant

The golden sand near the ocean feels unpleasant
on the sandpaper of the skin..

--

Esa Mäkijärvi (b. 1984) is a poet, critic and prose writer from Helsinki, Finland. His first poetry collection, Yökiipijä (Nightclimber), was published by Leevi Lehto's Ntamo publishing house in 2007. These poems are translations from the original book which was written in Finnish