1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Mirkka Rekola

Mirkka Rekola Quotes

Mirkka Elina Rekola was a Finnish writer from Tampere who published poems, aphorisms, essays. Her poetry was considered ‘difficult’, thus she gained wide audience as late as in the 1990s. She died in Helsinki in 2014. Wikipedia  

✵ 26. June 1931 – 5. February 2014
Mirkka Rekola photo
Mirkka Rekola: 22 quotes0 likes

Famous Mirkka Rekola Quotes

“Without moving anything / I want to see / the way this autumn / makes the birds move.”

Mirkka Rekola

From Syksy muuttaa linnut (Autumn Moves the Birds, 1961. 88 Poems, WSOY, 2000, ISBN 951-0-24783-9. Translated by Anselm Hollo).

“Driving through rain with you, / in a sea of rain / I saw only the bridges, their railings, / the passing lanes, / when the earth rose into my eyes / I heard, I heard that I had loved.”

Mirkka Rekola

“Stood there who knows how long looked / at the clouds the hedge / when someone came out of the door it was her daughter.”

Mirkka Rekola

“The nights are no longer warm,
The green tomatoes are cold to their cores,
The sparrows rock empty feeders with fright,
The doves linger forlornly in the low junipers,
The lights of the city thicken the November night.”

Mirkka Rekola

Mirkka Rekola. " Stanzas," translated in: Eamonn Wall (2008), A Tour of Your Country. p. 12

“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?"”

Mirkka Rekola

“FOG: Fog covers this region. / Can you still hear my voice? / I don't understand trees. / They try to grab our hair. / A branch has fallen on you. I know that. / Could you look behind me: / is there a load / on my back, as well?”

Mirkka Rekola

Mirkka Rekola Quotes about time

“When you grow to become visible in the world / and build a nest / above your head / there are times when you fly up there / and it is light and swims in the air”

Mirkka Rekola

From Taivas päivystää (The Sky's on Duty, 1996. 88 Poems, WSOY, 2000, ISBN 951-0-24783-9. Translated by Anselm Hollo).

“I was reading the Book of Job. / People I knew came and went, / I read their book, / the seasons turned away, / I had been reading for a long time. / I was quiet. Not a single leaf to be seen. / I looked up: it had gone dark on me, / that star / in the middle of the sentence: // Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

Mirkka Rekola

“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.”

Mirkka Rekola

Mirkka Rekola Quotes

“They speak their loud dialects, / Sicilians, Sardinians, / Calabrians, / they all have their own taverns. / At the other end of the alley, / on the other side / a quiet spot, / waiters and patrons at tables, / their faces, hairdos / out of Pompeii's frescoes. / Large eyes look at us, / the door does not open out, / it opens in.”

Mirkka Rekola

“IN THE SUN: Sickle moon still there in daylight. // We long for things as they were. / We want them back, / our blue-black nights, and the stars.”

Mirkka Rekola

“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.”

Mirkka Rekola

“In the restaurant, eyes / above a soup bowl's rim / Is it she? / Changes shape, is and is not. / Now she's spat out a bit of bone, / I don't think it's her, / I'm leaving, I'm done eating. / This is a long and mad journey: / I see her on the faces of others, my own.”

Mirkka Rekola

“OPEN: Gnats, too, are partly / air / and the swarming of seagulls / at the wind's mercy / inchoate / I walk / in front and between myself / in, out / abrupt and weary, an old heavy gate / I beat my own lintel to pieces.”

Mirkka Rekola

“The sea raises you to your feet. And dead calm.
Strands of light hold your hand. Now you have left
this shore. Now you are in the wind of an invisible sail.”

Mirkka Rekola

Mirkka Rekola, Kuka lukee kanssasi (Who is Reading with You), 1990; Translated by Sari Hantula. Quoted at Mirkka Rekola http://www.electricverses.net/sakeet.php?poet=22&poem=645&language=3, at electricverses.net, accessed 20-03-2017.

“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.”

Mirkka Rekola

“When I hate so much / that my eyes no longer close, / when I love so much / that I move, eyes open / close, far, without effort / not naming the country, the wind's evil”

Mirkka Rekola

“I lower the bill of my cap stop looking / thoughts ready to go / sit in this train that's as long as the journey”

Mirkka Rekola

From Ilo ja epäsymmetria (Joy and Asymmetry, 1965. 88 Poems, WSOY, 2000, ISBN 951-0-24783-9. Translated by Anselm Hollo).

“THE DESCENT: Faster I travel into the cold of the mountain / than I return from it. / One can't see the sun. / Wait, I come closer / as beside me the frozen snow / dwindles.”

Mirkka Rekola

Similar authors

Julio Cortázar photo
Julio Cortázar29
Argentinian writer None
Luciano De Crescenzo photo
Luciano De Crescenzo1
Italian writer None
Naguib Mahfouz photo
Naguib Mahfouz7
Egyptian writer None
Frank Herbert photo
Frank Herbert158
American writer None
Stefan Zweig photo
Stefan Zweig106
Austrian writer None
Alessandro Baricco photo
Alessandro Baricco9
Italian writer None
André Breton photo
André Breton70
French writer None
Jorge Amado photo
Jorge Amado4
Brazilian writer None
Eduardo Galeano photo
Eduardo Galeano12
Uruguayan writer None
William Saroyan photo
William Saroyan190
American writer None