Ilmar Lehtpere 

Translator

Cold stone flowers in her hair

eyes closed she listens
to what is swirling
           in the air

           and we all wonder

amidst the temporal, the tiring
is it possible
           to be the betrothed of the Infinite,

           of the Timeless

Everything that has been
has been
and will not be again,
or if it is, it will not be
in the same way.
After a thousand years of settling
the sea washes us out
onto a light blue shore,
oblivious of our weight
and roundness,
we are as numb as
a statue’s hand.
We need a book
to tell us we are secrets,
yet the pages stick together
like the yearly rings of a tree,
we see them
but not into them;
we need a set of laws
about forgotten beauty,
death’s repulsive face,
the racing wheel of time,
yet beauty
remains an unwritten book,
like life,
days, days,
white blossoms,
mist on the sea,
pages fall out,
full of something,
or nothing.

Thin brushes rustling on a canvas, listen:
this town bears your name, again and again
you’ll hear it uttered at the gate of Rotterdam
or by the narrow backstreets, the Cathedral,
age-old facades washed clean by a near
constant drizzle, till grey houses glimmer
like silver. Canals fill with even more water –
it was here that you painted and here you believed,
it was here that you loved, and then hated,
and still believed: everything comes across its opposite,
water in the sky and sky on the water,
till the past is nothing but a camera obscura
seen through the keyhole of modernity.
Brushes and restraint. Paints freshly stirred.
This knowledge that all great talents
will one day turn into someone else’s income.
It keeps raining , the slow rain seeping in
as if to wash off all the paint, layer by layer,
and see beneath it, return
to the beginning where there were no
brushstrokes, nor even a thought about them.
The serenity of people’s daily toil. Rain,
someone stopping, a figure on the bridge.
It keeps raining. Nieuwe Kerk.
Rain and light together.

I hadn’t planned this. Roads
meet in a valley and wind through
a town amidst snow-capped mountains.
Winter nears from the north.

Sunlight appears a scattered mist,
it turns glaring, covers everything,
makes mountains lines of clouds
for as long as you can watch them.
Lago Maggiore, the embankments,
the sky, all dissolve into a backdrop,
a broad silken cloth. I dive in
though a young mother smiles
at me. Oh!

A red boat waits at a dock,
seagulls laze on the handrails of a pier
and a sign says in an incongruous language:
‘No unauthorized fishing allowed.’
Ducks and dippers float about,
ridges loom like dreams
that are soon to doze off into oblivion.

I hadn’t planned this –
this journey, this life, the day to be
with you again,
you the one I met so early in my progress,
there in the afternoon streets
of my Nordic town.

All things pass – this day, this light,
this season – and no-one will ever tally up
the passing hours, their pleasures and pains,
to find some hewn truth in them.
No-one even needs it.

By nightfall, churches light up
on the hillsides
like white Christmas candles,
the villages and towns
a network of bulbs.

Numerous lives go on waiting
for a slow day.

This poem begins with rainfall in the narrow streets
everything is first a dream
there was once only a hillock here
drowned in sunlight and a sea of cypresses

but now it rains
on pale and patient paths of stone
ever polished by the feet of visitors
is there a meaning to it

archways walls of houses
the chime of bells and an echo of praises
rain that keeps on falling
on Piazza del Campo

wetting my hair
the only word for it is serenity
or business

hasn’t heaven always been
a place for those
who are ready to come falling down again

It is somewhere between
love and craftsmanship
that something we call art
is born.

But now
scrub these words to a blur
and see what then holds up
of things just said.

Crumbling leaves, the rubble.
Nothing but an undertone,

all else a bestowal, a gift,
a vision that you’ve never seen before,
a young orchard
looming pink at dawn,
fruitless yet so hopeful,

a landscape
awaiting its meaning,

an eye with its own
undeniable thirst.

A small plane rises
to the optimal altitude,
the stewardess brings coffee.
A faint crack is heard
and then it’s as if we’re sinking,
we- we feel good,
we sink into storm clouds.
The nose veers towards the ground,
we hurtle towards the explosion,
drink coffee and effuse.
Such hurtling could go on endlessly:
comfortably, with a grey rattling.
We’ve enough love already, and sympathy,
we’ve seen the pictures repeatedly,
we draft changes to the language,
so yes, why not explode.
A sexy, long and swift death
is as powerful as music.
”Do you know John Adams’s piece
A Short Ride in a Fast Machine?
It should be renamed endless.”
We smile at each other,
hand each other cups
and don’t have to think anymore
about how someone is suffering or left without god
while we plunge towards death.
The ground still drifts away before us:
if only it would last, if only.
Speed is its own and our apologia,
acceleration sustains enthusiasm.
If only it would last endlessly
explosion
endlessly
explosion
endlessly

‘again’ is a big word.
slowly and quickly
again

again men rejoice on the radio
that they are on the right road
and talk of the cyclical nature of time

a proper road goes in circles, even I
recognize young skin on the beach and
“et si tu n’existais pas,” sing the loudspeakers

men on the radio speak of the connection
of everything to everything else:  ringingly
one says, "the butterfly effect" – I lift my wings

cyclical time gives you a good sleep
for after such a sleep you think you’re revived
and again

I flutter my wing
the good men on the radio start coughing
I flap my wings more amply and a wind comes up

the men cough wheezing, the airwaves revolt
ships sink and swimmers drown, the final sleep
comes stormy and grey

let’s think of a word that never was before
it was just now
and now it isn’t anymore