Mirkka Rekola Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

The nights are no longer warm,

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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?