Mirkka Rekola citations

“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.”

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

“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?”

“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”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?"”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“One a child, one old / almost half a century apart // both / need my hand in this city”

“Up down / on summer's lake / the flying ant / finds a wall in the air”

“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.”

“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.”

“Two there on the beach / as close together as nostrils. / Calm sea day.”

“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”

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

“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.”