Saturday June 11th, Lac De Genève

I am in the harbour, contemplating
The bright noon sun’s decay,
And the clear decay of ropes that rot in water.
I am sitting on the seawall, ocassionally crossed
By delicate traceries of shadow
From the masts and riggings of the boats that pass.

I bought the cheapest bread I could find,
And even that was dear. It tastes good.
I think of you; about your absence,
That for once gives me a reason for my own.

A sudden wind shoots dusk across us,
And shakes the fragile peace of the marina;
The rigs all rattle and the big boats lean,
And make their taut wires creak and buzz.
The night is falling,
And I close my eyes and pray, obedient
To the bells that toll high vespers in the halyards.

First Truth

Bitter the blossom
That brushes the cheek,
And the grey dew that stays on your sleeve,

Sodden the sunrise
Pathetic and sweet
Like a promise you can’t believe.

Scattered in cold winds
That dart round the throat
In the dark of the April dawn,

Bitter the blossom
That brings no fruit,
When you’ve been dead so long.

Untitled

She seemed to me another kind of being
Where others hurried, home to warmth and shelter
She took no thought for night-fall, and consequences,
Careless and insensible,
Like a drunk on the pavement.
I thought myself no Pharisee;
Besides, there was no other side
On which I could pass by.

And so I found a place on your quotidian horizon,
Took up a part in the dramas of the street
In inconclusive tragedies,
Casual hostility and accidental persecution:
The drab world that shadowed eyes look out on.

Needlessly, I interrogate tomorrows.
In the razed wasteland of your unconscious mind
No fear has force to penetrate the hardened earth,
Tall weeds stand scorched and blackened.
The fiery dreams of the sickbed
Were not instantly consumed;
But they are pale
Where the Phoenix burns to cinders;
Pale where spent hopes die.

Demi-Nocturne

So things assume their proper state and stature.
The far lakeshore is loosened
Black from a black background
And stars shine through the grand thin clouds.
Now, ruffling the lake, a wind
Dissolves its mirror sky,
Shatters and calmly recollects
The bright faint graphite glitter
And the thick black cloth held up with silver nails.

And if you came to seek a little clarity of mind
For the solution of some anxious problem,
That which here is clarified
Is not what first perplexed you.
Night offers its own sweet anxiety;
The irridescent surfaces of things
Stop meditation short,
Yield no illumination, save
What you contemplate:
The wind through the strings of the night,
The graceful curve of the moon,
In peaceful alternation in the waters,
The shaken image and the still.

‘Pour Toi, Orion!’

Pour toi, Orion, les arbres se sont convertis
en allumettes
Ils flammaient, joyeux, dans les feux du soleil
qui te précèdent
Ils brûlent toujours dans l’oubli des beaux jours
qui enfin cèdent

O chasseur du ciel
solennel
Dans l’extase de ton geste figé!

* * *

Et si je suis caché parmi ces branches fûmantes,
Moi blême, timide!
(qui ne supportais pas la vue
Du sang de l’autômne parmis les branches)
et si je suis ici
Ça n’est pas que je te doute, non:
Alors que je te vois je brûle aussi

* * *

O chasseur
du ciel solennel
Tu es venu au temps plus grave;
Peut-être pour la guérison de l’an?
Tu es venu à la porte du ciel
Et tu rôdes à ce seuil lointain:
Est-ce pour la guérison de l’âme?

Kruununhaka II
’Und unserer kranken nachtbar auch’

When I came you were folding clothes
And did not stop, as if to show
You were not waiting for me.
The sun had set behind the high town houses,
The sky still held a pallid lustre
And had the greyness of your eyes.

It takes a moment to adjust to natural colours,
While the mind’s eye dilates, and welcomes
All that is restored,
The small mercies of your quiet flat

* * *

I was at your window in the darkness
Looking sadly at the clinical half-moon
When the clangour carried
From the empty church’s tower
Tolling the twelve bells of your midnight.

And as I left, you were sleeping,
Maybe feigning sleep,
To save my tiptoes, or your tongue.

May your dream come now! And may it be
A dream of safety.

Kruununhaka

When I lay my head to your breast
I had thought to hear only silence,
Not the forgotten bloodstream’s roar.

The fierce onward force is lost
Like the constant city traffic
That has become our silence.

‘As the pulse slows’

(I)

The afternoon was brief,
My days are empty.
I travel at odd times
On buses full of school-children
And the time goes quickly,
Passing through the green daylight,
Often stopping
Among the woods and houses.


Empty, unhurried day.
The low sun glitters in the blonde hair of the schoolgirls.
The boy have pulled their hats down over their eyes.
The afternoon was brief,
And evening split the sun
As a knife halves a softened apple.
The apple colours of the sunset sky
Are changed for city clouds
And rotten streetlight brown.

I am a witness to the rush hour
And the still traffic;
I belong to these mists
Watching the exhaust-smoke caramelise
In the thin dusk.
Commuters hurry through the changing lights,
Stopping,
Starting,
Red, amber, green, amber, red.


Your father too is driving home:
He holds the wheel in one hand,
A telephone in the other;
He keeps one eye on the road.
It starts to rain
And the windscreen fills with raindrops
Like Seurat sketching electric light.

In a moment
Catching sight of a reflection
As a stranger peers out through a misty window
You glimpse your own life –
Look! –

The car doors echo
Off the dark housefronts
A little girl is dancing in the soft rain.
The front door opens, and she skips

Through the headlights to her home.

(II)

A day becomes a memory.
The crack of birchwood and old newspaper
The smack of sliced potatoes
Hitting boiling oil
The frozen wheels
Of your bicycle
Cutting the birch leaves stiff with frost

(III)

Take off your watch
And lay it by your bedside.
Why wrap your wrist
With manmade minutes
Whose steady rhythm knows no mercy?
These machines do not know day from night.
Their ticking tries to drown the stars’ slow beat.

(IV)

As the pulse slows
In every wrist
The traffic thins
On every road
The slow stars turn,
And shake the nightworld empty.
You remember
The instant between summer and winter.


The shutter opens
And closes; the retina retains
An image of the partial moment
The fraction of a fraction
Skipping through the headlights
Home.

Jacob's Ladder / La Scala Di Jacopo

Now I remember why I bought fine paper -
A melody that came to me
As I was driving by;
I stopped there by the roadside ,
To fix it in my mind.

It’s hard to look forward to things
In Royston. Anticipation goes flat in the bottle
The frost shines on the bins
All along the pavement,
As they stand under the streetlamps
Anticipating Wednesday morning.

Between the traintrack and the factory
Between the red light and the blue
Between the streetlights and the pavement,
I try to fix my thoughts on you.

”And what about Jacob?”, the starlight asked.
He was an ordinary man.
He was not the first or only one
To hide in a father’s blindness;
To lose himself in a mother’s love.
It was simple: he became what he was not
To have what was not his.


Still,
Cold among the flocks,
Worries,
Constellations,
All that the heart contains.

The echo of the car door
Off the raindark housefronts.
She skips
Through the headlights to her home.

Angels do not appear to me, you know
Although I travel on my own.
Though I stand tonight in wonder;
Though I lay my head on stone.

Kreivi Seisoi

Kreivi seisoi puoli päivä ruusutarhassansa;
Ei huomanut kun pakkas-jää suli.
Sitten hän lähti vaeltamaan tilukset ympäri.
Hän puhui riikinkukkoruotsia,
Vaikka kukaan ei vastannut.
Voi ulkomaalainen omalla maalla!

Illalla, mustassa, hän seisoi tanssilattian reunalla;
Askeleet jotka hän oppi kunigatar Kristinan hovissa olivat eri.
Tuskin hän liikutti yhtä jalkaansa.

Ilja

Ilja? Kyllä mä muistan, kyllä;
Hänkin oli kiva poika,
Surullinen kuin hevosen silmät.
Ja kerran, kauan ennen aamunkoittoa,
Äänensä korvissani: Tu! Tu veljein,
Ennen ku’ mei’än ilo menee ohi!

Aamu oli musta kuin savusauna,
Ja karjakkojen ääntäkään ei kuulunut;
Me olimme vielä yksin kaiken jälkeen
Kun aurinko tuli, iso kuin ladonovi.

Varmaan hänkin päätyi jonnekin päin Venäjää.

Savun Varjo

Helmalapsen leluja on ruohalla
Päivä on lopenut
Tyhjä, tyhjä, tuuli puuissa
Kirjan lehdet jo alkoivat kastua.