Serpens

Once a serpent rose from the pole,
now its turned into a shadow.

The moon's low-lying,
the snows are reddening,

a foxtailed light curls
through the forest's fur collar.

The room was smaller before,
now even hunger's a fear.

The one who once gave breath
presses it lower now
towards the snow, under the snow.

A split in the dark, a sudden gust,
a bluish necklace, the sky's pole.


Cassiopeia

The dress is sleeping on the chairback,
the chair's outside, it's a queens chair.

The tree's blood stops, a crackle comes
from the forest. The frost burn the crows black.

Schedir, Caph and Rubca draw a woman on the sky.
The dress wakes and slips across a pale landscape.

Secretly it gathers the birds from the trees
and leads them to sea-graves,

secretly it gathers under its skirts
the lines of the stars.

Cold hands go through my dream, the tears
freeze in my eyes, the frozen sweat crowns my head.

These designs are familiar in every room,
this dance sewn through the eyes of fear.


(Pukkila)

And old birch has put its branches in the sky's eyes. As the earth goes round messages from distant constellations are heard in the cottage, a tree takes on the sound of the universe. I tuck the girls in and we read an evening prayer together. Sanni drops off, but Tilja wants me to lie beside her before she dares close her eyes. The noises have passed from inside to the outside, as if a mitten had been turned inside out.
     Outside a scorpion prowls round Orion. Glow-worm lights are starring the space of the grass. Autumn is germinating. I go to the living room and put more logs on the fire. Tearing the bark off a log I find an astronomer's cosmology on the inner bast: the curlicues of hunger and desire. There is the sky, which I throw into the fire, there are the remnants of love, those sounds emanating from the tree. And there is the sign of fear, as near as the edge of the sky.


Poems from Taivaan latvassa ('In the skytop', Tammi, 1998)

Translated by Herbert Lomas