Raimo Tuomainen
How to Be in the World as a Good-Looking Mystery
– poems from the book
Mediapinta, Tampere 2018
BORN IN A FORTRESS
God will do as a fortress.
Its devout pennants enchant from on high.
Its proud cannons offer protection
against those who have not deserved its shelter.
I was born there.
Many have repeated my birth
in prettified words of remembrance.
I grew up as if learning to love, yet in that love
what was on offer was hatred
toward those who trusted in something else.
A lie always leads to wasting away.
The hypocrisy of life smothered innate understanding.
Each of us, over the course of our life,
must be ready for an autopsy of body and soul
if we wish to preserve ourselves.
I am coming – are you ready?
POEMS
Though I scarcely exist,
I have given birth to countless poems.
Beautiful is hardly what you’d call them,
but ugly at least.
And you can’t even find any real fault in them.
I’M A BAD PERSON
I am a bad person.
I have never polished a car.
You can’t get me to communion.
I have messed around drunk.
I refused to go to NCO school.
Sometimes I come up with a filthy joke. And I tell it.
A bad person, that’s what I am,
but I have a good life.
MY CHILDREN, WHO DIED
My children, who died before you were born,
sometimes you weigh on my mind.
Where are you?
In the autopsy report. Yes.
In the graveyard. Yes.
In our memories. Yes.
But I keep waiting for some other answer as well.
I worry.
What can become of children
who never meet a single human being?
At times I would like to raise
you fiercely, and then protect you from death.
As a child I was afraid of water.
I would not take you near bodies of water.
Tight spaces choked off my breath.
I would keep you often out in the marketplace…
IF I WEREN’T LIKE THIS
If I weren’t the way I am,
I would revel in life far more than average.
Can you even imagine how my thoughts would romp?
Love and ideas – and poems – would bubble out of me.
I would drum them out and launch them into the sky
so that everyone – everyone! – would understand.
I wouldn’t cover anything up, hide nothing in a drawer.
If only I were different than I am.
DEPTH IS WHAT I LACK
Depth is what I lack.
There is only a thin layer of me, though spread over many surfaces.
To my credit it must be said
that some of me even trickles boldly along the edges of abysses.
But inner dimensions…
I don’t reach the measures where solemn earnestness is formed,
not even in grief.
After all, I am a joke.
MY SELF-ESTEEM
I wonder if my self-esteem is enough for life?
I could boost it
by humiliating him.
He hasn’t managed
what I have.
My story is unmatched.
None of you has,
at a little over ten years old, marched
along the icy gutter of a five-storey house
from one end of the building to the other and back.
Except Harri.
But Harri I have no intention of humiliating.
Perhaps my self-esteem is enough.
But only perhaps.
AN EASY LIFE
An easy life would be a horror,
it would feel as if all my gifts
were being wasted.
So that I can keep reaching,
I have not grown any bigger than this.
An ordinary life,
that would feel as if
some system
were spoon-feeding instructions for living.
I don’t sit in a high chair.
In many ways I am very ordinary.
But I feel that my life’s work
is to see more than just 360 degrees.
All-embracing ordinariness doesn’t fit with that.
An easy and ordinary death,
I have no objection to that.
Shake on it.
IF I AM EVER EXECUTED
If I am ever executed by firing squad at dawn
and I have to speak my last words,
I will not utter anything crystal clear.
I’M OF TWO MINDS
I am of two minds.
Two is far too many.
My left side strains toward the right,
my right side peers toward the left.
And then the going is weighed down by the worry
that I will ruin my chances
in both.
I envy a cloud:
to just go with the wind
without even knowing how to want.
Wanting is often
painful,
especially when you don’t understand
what you want, yet still you want.
LEAVING CERTIFICATE FROM THE SCHOOL OF LIFE
When I get my leaving certificate from the school of life,
my mark for carefulness won't be much to boast of, I know that.
It is hard to foresee
which of life's tests
will weigh on that certificate.
I hope they at least remember
to enter the number of children.
They say that when you die
you have the sensation
of travelling through a tunnel.
Fine by me,
I've always liked the smell of tunnels.
But back to the certificate.
If my unselfishness
hasn't been taken into account in the grading,
I intend to complain.
I DON'T NEED TO
I don't need to be anything special.
It's enough that I'm on this planet
and quietly turn the whole world upside down.
I was born to spread a gorgeous gospel,
a new awareness:
that we can simply lounge here, being.
And enjoy. And let go. And go off.
And, on the quiet, put the world into a new faith.
WITHOUT ANY GOOD REASON
I like you,
just like that,
for no good reason.
Or perhaps one could say that
it's simply pleasant to be in places
where you are.
I somehow find myself drawn there.
I suppose I'm clumsy
when it comes to feelings.
It's a challenge to say things bravely.
I might almost be in love — with you, of all people.
I HAVE A WINE JUST FOR YOU
I have a wine that is yours.
With you in my mind, even when I wasn't thinking of you,
I planted the bush, raised it, stripped it of its fruit.
I carried out every step up to bottling
with care and from the heart.
I cherish your bottle.
I guess, or rather I know, that you will never drink it.
At least you'll know
there is a wine for you.
LOGIC
I've come to understand
that between two teeth
there can be only one gap.
But when it comes to us,
logic doesn't apply.
Between you and me there is so much.
FANTASY
A person needs fantasy
to enliven a dull everyday life.
As your dog
I would receive your devout strokes and pats.
We would share walks in nature, tracking down fascinating scents...
I could run away from you,
and you'd forgive me just like that,
overjoyed to have me back.
YOU ENJOY CLICHÉS
You delight in clichés.
I, on the other hand, only want to beget
new godless figures of speech,
to feed them, to cherish them.
I'd fire them up into the sky,
to spread from there
over all the insatiable humankind.
If only even one of them
would ripen into a genuine cliché.
NO ONE EVER
Sometimes I've worried about the fact that
although almost everyone seems to like me
and many love me,
no one has ever
fallen head over heels in love with me.
I suppose that's a big sorrow. Or perhaps it's small.
It could be something in between as well.
AS SPIDER-MAN
I would come to you
as Spider-Man.
At first I would pretend
not to notice your beauty.
Then there would be — supposedly, not for real —
some mishap with the webs,
and we would end up stuck to each other.
It would all work out from there,
once you had first
fallen for me.
DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE KISSED?
Do you remember when we kissed?
It was something.
It was an unforgettable event.
If you don't remember,
don't rush
to have your medication checked.
It happened in my daydreams,
to which you have only a flimsy connection.
If there is a problem somewhere,
I admit
it's in me.
I AM EMPTY
I am empty, just a few roles and some clothes.
Someone blew me up like this – I'm supposed to be flat.
Only those who have solved my crossword will understand.
IF SOMEDAY
If I should ever lack
one of my senses,
it will not keep the world from being beautiful,
not even my world.
I can always, if need be, smell beauty.
It will still be beautiful
even when I am lying in the soil.
If one day I end up lying
like a vegetable,
I know I will feel suffocated
if I have even the slightest sense of the situation.
I will rage, and no one will notice.
I will curse medicalisation.
I would never, ever want to experience that,
but if it happens,
I suppose that burden will have to be borne.
Everyone has their own cross.
I may even pray that, at least,
my claustrophobia will not strike again
in that small body of mine.
But the world is beautiful.
HOLIDAY!
Holiday!
The right to lounge about doing nothing,
permission not to utter a single sharp thought.
I simply evaporate in the warmth of the sun
to somewhere up in the sky,
aaahh.
Yikes! What if I end up in a thundercloud!
BEAUTY CONTEST
I am not particularly visual,
but I enjoy
the beauty of the planet and of women.
Once I organised
a beauty contest.
You do not find lakes or seas in women.
I have never seen the planet smile.
Women have no snow-capped mountain peaks.
The planet’s eyes have never stared at me bewitchingly.
Green forests do not grow in women.
The planet does not display feminine curves.
But in both there is delicate sensuality.
In both there is a beautiful, tender
motherliness that cares for its children.
It was hard to award the points.
But in the end I let the women win,
because Mother Earth knows even without me
that she is beautiful, the most beautiful in the world,
by nature.
IT DOESN’T KILL YOU
Living does not kill you.
Well, nor does it kill you
if you miss out on something.
Blunders embarrass you for a while,
small ones a little,
big ones for longer.
But when you die
those mistakes are no longer embarrassing.
What may embarrass you
is never having tried
a bit of naughtiness or foolishness.
WORRY AND SHAME
Humanity is masterful
at inventing worry and shame.
What a vocation we have,
not only for ruinous feuds
but also for pointless mental self-violence.
CROOKED
Every person, in their own beautiful way,
is a bit askew, grown crooked,
like every tree.
That makes everything unpredictable,
life is exciting.
Two people, each crooked in their own way,
may, moreover,
together be quite straight on average.
LIFE IS LICKING
Life is licking.
We so sickeningly
crave each other’s approval
that we forget our own truth.
We cling to one another.
To you I promise
that you do not need
to please me constantly,
even though I am this important.
You are utterly loved.
IF I BELITTLE YOU
If time after time
I question, belittle and flatten you,
the problem is not in you.
It is in me.
It is simply
emotional violence,
even if you no longer recognise it as such
once you have learnt your lessons.
INJUSTICE
Nature is built on injustice.
Society should not be.
Those who want us
to take our model from nature
are, in practice, advocating
a penalty shoot-out
where the champions of competition
take shots at those kicked around by life.
IRRITATING TRAITS
Every person is full
of irritating traits
that you notice
when you look from above and behind, to the left.
But why look?
Particularly irritating
are the people who remind you
that other people
are only irritating
if you look from above and behind, to the left.
DREAMERS
For dreams to be made real,
dreamers are needed first.
But where are the modern dreamers?
Silenced, sidelined, forgotten,
so they will not disturb the steady, numbing journey
toward a future without vision.
Tomorrow I will give up my vision
and make a dream instead.
Feel free to copy.
IN THE MIDDLE AGES
In the Middle Ages
no one cared that many people were dying of hunger.
In the Middle Ages
people’s insights were suppressed
and they had to think the way one was supposed to think.
In the Middle Ages
the intrinsic value of a human being was not seen;
they had to earn their worth.
The Middle Ages were still,
at least a moment ago,
the dark Middle Ages.
MANY LIKE TO THINK THEY KNOW
Many like to think they know
what the world is like
or at least almost, in the end.
They trust
that modern science will domesticate
the truth.
But science is an extremely clumsy tool,
with which you cannot even see bogeymen.
When you combine science, art and religion,
you get such a hold on the world
that even the bogeys disappear.
ARE YOU MEANT TO BE UNDERSTOOD?
Are you meant to be understood?
You fling your strange codes at my eyes
and by the time I have slowly managed to decode them,
the best-before date has passed.
I look for a red thread in you.
And I find one.
When I start to pull it,
you somehow change the lighting,
and the thread looks brown instead.
You are devious.
When I analyse your plot and
manage to distil from you a fine law of nature,
you turn out to be the exception that proves the rule.
I am left with only a beautiful theory.
I seize my fate
and decide to kiss your cheek.
When I take aim,
you turn upside down,
and I find your knee in my mouth.
Is that enough?
My social intelligence can hardly cope.
You are certainly not read
like a guide to the nature of Finland.
You are more like a comic book
full of three-panel gags.
When you move from one gag to the next,
nothing that came before matters at all.
I FILLED SOMETHING EMPTY IN YOU
Thanks to life.
Without life you would never have had me near you.
What a blessing I have conjured for you.
I filled something empty in you.
My eyes and my smile
offer you the warmth
that a human society seething with coldness does not grant.
I only utter some silly little phrase,
and at once your tetanus has melted.
From my embrace
your hydrophobia is refined into a desire to dive in.
The only puzzling thing is
how long it took you to realise and accept
how much I mean.
MARRIAGE IS MORE THAN LOVE
Marriage is more than love,
trust, friendship or security.
It is all of these, and something more.
The foundation, however, is love.
The purest, most unbending light
is the radiance of love,
burning from eye to eye
and whose glow is felt in the heart.
Let your shared future
bathe in that inexhaustible light.
Love does not have to burn,
as long as it warms.
Love does not have to be readable,
as long as it is recognisable.
Love does not have to be unambiguous,
as long as it beckons you towards it.
The main thing is that love is.
And it can be fed, cherished, even teased.
Sometimes it rests,
but even then
it is already waiting to clamber out again.
YOU ARE ONE
You have chosen.
You are one.
You have received and deserved one another.
It takes trust,
it takes will,
it takes sensitivity.
There is light in the world.
You have seen it in each other.
Darkness, too, is part of life.
Turn the light towards one another,
and even the darkness will feel purposeful.
INFERIORITY
They tuned their fine tongues,
which I, of all people, do not understand.
All I can do is sign
for them to go away.
They know all one and a half
of God’s secret names, they mutter them.
I only watch them, hiding my despicableness.
They take part.
Everyone hears their laughter, and it keeps echoing
in a little nook between the ears.
Beside them you find yourself
in a deep well, from which you cannot even sign:
fly away and yet, save me!
And when I dip my finger in the water, I realise
that there is more and more of it, bottomless –
if I grow tired, there is nothing
that will not drown me.
Their purpose is just this:
with a slight smile on their faces
to do away with the people of the dark.
For them only light and truth count,
and I stand for neither.
It is no use.
Either I fall into hell or I close my eyes.
As if they did not exist.
This is the lie I still have to try.
I SIZZLE
I seethe
because you are good for nothing.
You only, in some abstract way,
sweeten
my life.
So that’s that.
If you were at least white chocolate,
I could take a bite.
You are a shimmering attractiveness
that disturbs my concentration
on all the injustices of the world.
The world, after all, is from hell,
and you completely mess up that feeling,
you create enthusiasm for the hereafter
and leave it at that.
If you absolutely must be an angel,
be at least a hellish angel,
so it would be easy to shun you.
Middle finger to you!
WHAT A WASTE
What a waste,
that I never managed to tell them
how important and dear they were.
One whole stream of possibilities
dried up in pointless timidity.
WAS THERE A MISTAKE?
Quite often I have wondered
whether some mistake was made
when I was born a human.
Is this really the kind of thing
I am supposed to think about?
It feels as if
I was meant to be born a reindeer
and then report to Santa Claus
to fly and make others fly,
to bring gifts to all the children of the world.
I might, to be sure, have got fed up rather soon,
seeing how much stuff
children are given.
There is nothing for it but to trust
that my fate has been chosen wisely.
I HAVE WAITED SO
So I have waited, oh yes.
That within me great insights would be conceived
to carry humankind a notch towards the light.
Or at least society. At least me.
But my thoughts are so tiny, reflexes really,
snowflakes or grains of sand.
Pretty enough, to be sure, but blown away
in a single breath.
Once written down they condense
into such trifles that one glance
is enough to read and discard them.
And on top of that: the unfathomable dust
embedded in them, so dirty, so depraved!
And even the light – the sun is setting
night and day.
WRONG HAIKU
I'm so very wrong:
a haiku, but from the bottom
growing deformed!
YOU CAN SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME
You can see right through me.
All the emptiness I’m made of
is painfully easy to make out.
And yet my task would be to reflect
at different wavelengths
and in different dimensions,
so that it would turn into colour,
preferably a whole spectrum.
But what if I am only a paltry illusion
trying to shimmer with light?
Do not search for the truth,
because once you find it
I will no longer be.
JUST THEN I REMEMBERED
Will you forgive me
for not looking at you
when you, proud, worn out by life,
were showing off
what you had conjured so neatly
with a tiny crochet hook
in the middle of a volcanic eruption;
I had just remembered
my latest verses.
Won’t you?
THAT IN YOU
I so fiercely long
for that in you.
Of course I care a lot
about many other things too.
No, I’m not dependent,
not at all!
But I can’t bear life,
not this life,
without it.
HOW CAN YOU EVEN COMPARE?
How can you even compare?
I am the dawn,
still bleary from the density of night,
but after a strong coffee
all sparkling glances.
That one is just the evening’s final joke
in a dozing company.
It does make you smile,
but who has the energy to say,
“shall we call it a night?”
Don’t you realise:
you are in love with me!
YOUR TEACHINGS
You lured me into a school for fools.
Being so evasive,
I earned only barely passing grades.
They made me sing some shrill high E,
though I can’t tell an octave
from octane.
They stripped me of my pride.
I do wonder if I’m really fit
to hang as your wall tapestry.
Send someone else into your training,
award them a scholarship if you like.
Your teachings suit someone
whose brain waves tick along
unambiguously
one, cross, two.
I FELL IN LOVE WITH A CLOUD
I fell in love with a cloud,
with its warm,
tender touch on my cheeks.
It knew human language –
phew, what magic!
It whispered, “Aa, eh!”
And I took it to mean
it loved me;
why else
would anyone say that?
The sun stirred
and allowed the cloud to fade.
The water molecules got
to fulfil their purpose.
That purpose
was not me.
ON THE BRINK OF A FRIEND
I am on the brink of a friend,
counting yellow dandelion heads,
checking if they’re odd in number.
It would feel so natural
to pick a handful
and pluck away
until the result
is statistically significant.
You could be
that eternal bud
of a wood anemone.
Why then do you pretend
to be a thistle,
with growing passion
day after day?
And as these days roll by,
the dandelion yellows
turn to white.
Then just one puff.
And the counting becomes
effortless indeed.
AWAKE
I startle awake.
All that remains in waking life
are sentences lost
from masterpieces
and fragments of incomprehensible
compositions.
I would only like to sleep.
I would like to hear
my counterpart sound out
as part of me.
Just as in my dream.
I do have, as comfort, memories
of a shared symphony and epic.
But even they hold back.
When I snatch even one
into my arms,
every one of them starts crying.
So do I.
IF AT LEAST
Flies breed
from dead flesh.
If at least that could be the purpose
of this relationship’s death –
that up into the sky
new flies
would rise.
IT WAS YOU I TRIED
It was so you I tried for.
I reached out, trying to get there,
to the heights that were ours.
I didn’t raise you to be a star,
but I did make you my moon,
all of the twelve I know,
and a little like the one
drawn smiling
in a children’s book.
I shouted in delight,
do you want to hear a story about love,
and you said, don’t shout in my ear.
I was about to ask
something important,
but I no longer had the strength.
AFTER ALL MY WOOING
I posed as a sugar-acid attack
so you could not resist me.
But you, schooled in books,
knew everything about
the sinfulness of sweets.
I posed as a coffin
to make you cry yourself
stuck to me, with white flowers.
You were not one
to soften.
For an absurdly long time I held on,
mapping the terrain
of your ego.
It just turned out to be
too small or too large
or empty or out of reach.
Whatever it was,
it was too much for me.
Or else you are simply
a supernatural whole,
unscientifically daft
at understanding my truth.
Let me just say
my truth has been tested –
it most certainly
did not burn in the fire.
Perhaps you are just
an expressionless emoji.
If you are, come to life,
you have it in you!
I can show you
what a just-right
kind of life can be.
DARK HOMES WHERE
Dark homes where they loved the lie about light,
and hastily, neatly swept-up memories, they lie in wait.
Like herpes they crawl up from their hiding places
to bruise you just when you are at your most tender.
They spy, learn every stretch of a human life,
are present without ever asking for a place.
They tighten the throat a little, for that is what they were bred for.
Sometimes anxiety calls for tidiness, sometimes for droplets.
They always lie, yet demand absolute truth.
If no one pays the bill, they arrive as an inheritance, cling to the genes.
And that smile, always,
when something is avenged!
But that smile, however captivating, is not real.
It does not rise from the heart but from the mirror.
There is a crack in it, through and through.
YOU ARE PERFECT
You are perfect.
You don't need anything more,
though more
wouldn't hurt either.
You are exactly
what the world now needs,
perfect from above, below, from front and from behind.
Storms and cracks embellish the world,
and they embellish you as well.
Of course you may be dissatisfied too.
That also makes you
a little more beautiful.
I ADMIRE THE STIFFNESS OF YOUR NECK
I admire the stiffness of your neck.
It offers
a fine excuse to cross the border,
out of the realms of grimness.
In my hands I hold a visa
to your neck.
I'D TAKE YOU
I'd take you, thank you.
You can even be a little underdone,
I actually like dough.
And with no icing!
I INTEND
I intend to smuggle myself
into the lands of your souls.
YOU
You!
You. You.
To you, with you, into you, in you, as you, being you, from you.
From you.
You. You!
THE LUCIA PROCESSION
Our Lucia procession
on its way to redeem
gifts from life,
day by day.
You as the self-evident one to clear the way;
no audience vote was needed.
Your candle flickers clumsily.
I wonder if you really
ever even needed it,
since you already shine
without it.
MESS AROUND WITH ME
Mess around with me.
If you like, I'll be
chewing gum that tastes of salty liquorice,
so you can smack it loudly,
blow it into a bubble and burst it.
Or I can be used
in a gun game;
the insanely strict Finnish army demands:
– Load and make safe!
But I refuse to be
gum that tastes of garlic.
A SUITABLE HABITAT
After all, we have
this suitable habitat.
Inside it, it is happy to be happy.
When each one takes,
they give at the same time.
It renders meaningless
many small scratches
around the heart.
I AM IN LOVE WITH MYSELF
I am in love with myself.
I think so, because
you have become
such a central part of my thoughts
and of my heart.
APHRODITE
Aphrodite!
You have been stamped with love.
Wherever you walk,
you give and receive heaven,
as long as there are at least a few
small warm hearts
near you.
THE CLOSER YOU ARE
The closer you are,
the more sharply I remember
my sex.
Though you also leap into my thoughts
from hours of driving distance away.
YOU INFECTED ME
You infected me with a mind-sickness.
It can never really bite you,
but it does bite me.
Before you appeared,
I knew nothing
of the pains of you-lessness.
But now.
BATTERY
I had to pry
the battery from the smoke alarm,
because I am burning for you.
ONE PERSON
That one person can change
the whole world.
One insignificant being
with its lungs, small intestine, heart.
One heroic soul
with its neuroses, fits of rage, headaches.
They just blow out
some mysterious incense.
And darkness is nowhere to be found.
THROUGH AND THROUGH
I want to search you for
that very last particle
that wouldn't blow up in my accelerator.
Would you go through and through?
I, at least,
will, through and through.
YOU ARE MY CHINESE ROSE
I won't bring you flowers,
because I want you
to grow yourself, and water yourself.
We'll change the soil whenever needed,
even if it stings a little.
You are my Chinese rose.
Wait, I'll talk to you,
that's how flowers
grow better.
SOMETIMES I LOSE MY SENSITIVITY
I'm sorry,
sometimes I lose my sensitivity
when I strain myself over intellectual problems.
I may seem emotionless then.
I promise to cry for you tonight.
I PROMISE TO BE BORN AS SOMEONE ELSE
Let me die in your arms.
There I promise to be born quite different,
more lovable.
Contractions: I will become so small
that nothing dull can be discerned in me.
ONLY THESE THREE WORDS
Only these three words
are enough to distil everything.
The rest is unnecessary, though not without meaning.
Even if we were read through and through,
we would remain eternal, unsolved riddles
whose value cannot be measured.
We are nothing
and we are everything,
depending on who looks.
TELEPATHY
Why should anyone
who has never had a telepathic experience
believe in telepathy?
And why should anyone
who has had such an experience
deny the existence of telepathic experiences?
IF I WERE GOD
If I were God
at the beginning of time,
first I would create the angels.
They're a lot of fun.
But fairly soon I'd have to make humankind,
to produce chocolate.
GOD HAS NO RIGHT
God has absolutely no right
to come and judge people
if he has not himself experienced
what it is to be in worse than dire straits,
to have gone mad
or to have a personality disorder.
Besides, he isn't coming anyway.
MISS GOD
Miss God,
you must have a hard time not laughing
when you listen to these preachers
who imagine you
as the same kind of nutcase
our forebears
have been for thousands of years.
If you are anywhere near almighty,
you surely also know, with great tact,
how to hold back your divine laughter.
At least
don't chuckle at my poems,
please.
Or then again, no,
on second thought, no.
Go ahead and laugh.
BOUND TO ANOTHER
To be so damn tenderly attached
to another human being —
that is heaven.
And that is precisely
what the angels envy.
DENSE REALITY
This dense reality shuts our eyes to the frame.
There is only the canvas on which we pray the brush for the right strokes.
It is so hard to remember truth without synthetic colours as our blanket.
But colour — it is only play with wavelengths and points of view.
And the painting is a poem, open to any reading.
The Master's imagination outdoes any illustration.
GOD'S TEARS
God's tears rise from the emptiness of perfect bliss.
Creation numbs meaninglessness,
but omnipotence turns divinity into hell.
God so thirsts, through the created,
for blindness to his own emptiness.
WHAT IS
What is, is also in me, for there is no real boundary between us.
We are all of experiencing,
whose borderlines are ornaments drawn with utmost purity.
Our individuality, our secrets and our darkness exist,
yet they too are only endearing, droplet-like, relatively eternal illusion.
Let us enjoy what we as if are, and what we are not.
That is what is called life.
What has been is in me as well, as an explanation for everything.
There is no time, and there is.
Our understanding needs a lane that seems to be moving.
All future is in me in bud, with its boundless potentials,
in a way as much history as yet to be met.
We are all that fills the All, a seed selection of infinity,
fulfilments of emptiness, when we look deep enough into our own eyes,
which are not there.
OF THE HUMAN MIRACLE
So many of us
are fleeting particles in the universe.
The gods are an exception;
they have a firmer grip, though consciously outside it all.
Yet they stress that temporariness is an illusion.
Like time.
Everything experienced is eternal.
Life is a long moment of devotions,
during which one may racket about as much as one pleases.
Thus from the human wonder there comes at least a fading nuance.
We are meant to hum a song of freedom.
Not one and the same, but each composing their own.
For as cogs in a machine we are tiny deviations.
We fit better as a particle in the stream of chaos.
But whoever does not reach that
in their fear, shame, ingratitude, even in their rage,
is not condemned, no.
That too is a song.
I WANT TO HEAR
I want to hear all the sounds of my life once more.
I am ready even for those I never managed to notice.
The invisible, unused keys may jingle the heaviest.
Many of my paths have been grimly lonely,
on many I have been trampled under others' feet.
But the sound of my steps, they all ring out beautifully. Ah!
NIGHT-TIME TRUTH
At night all those risen from the dead console me: life is only a dream from which we wake into a parody.
I long for those dreams in the daytime,
but I face my dead only, like commercial breaks, in the middle of nightmares.
In vain I seek confirmation from a daydream.
No one has whispered to me whether one may, by day, trust the truth of night.
The question would be: rst ema?
MY EYES ARE OLDER THAN I AM
My eyes are older than I am,
they have seen much of others' pain, perhaps too much.
My smile is younger than I am,
for it has truly flickered only for what is beautiful.
At times it has shyly tried to appear even before suffering,
to lift something up.
So little strength it has had, barely enough to show itself.
At last my eyes, that have seen everything, have learned to burn even in the dark.
One day my smile too will find understanding,
will spring from love for the world, not for its condition.
And so I grow old, suitably.
ONLY AFTER I DIED DID I UNDERSTAND
Only after I died did I understand
how much light
I had created in spite of my darkness.
Only after I died did I realize
how much
a little can mean.
The current that flows
between people,
unnoticed, insignificant, non-existent…
It fills heaven's dimensions.
There is nothing greater
than the smallness that fills the universe.
We are vast.
A human moment that no one is aware of
is a firm touch of purpose
and at the same time the faintly gentle spearhead of love.
Thirst is enough to give water its purpose.
Only after I died did I remember
how the end of the world is in between everything.
And how everything is covered by a new beginning.
Wrong was needed too, for the right to be crowned.
We are not what we are not,
but we are everything else.
And that is blessedly much.
After dying one rests a while.
It takes a moment before the smile.
It is the smile of understanding, of play,
of forgiveness and of loving;
exactly the same smile as in life.
One just did not
see it then.
PROMISE
No, relatives, do not be afraid,
I will not, once dead,
come making a fuss about myself!
I know my family, after all —
it has never felt the slightest pull toward the departed.
And those fear genes:
I have no wish to be stoking my loved ones' terror.
But these readers, they are a different breed.
When in some distant future they are on the verge of dozing off,
I will tap them a message with all the horse power
available to the unincarnated.
I will rattle them so that they yelp
and then remember what they have read.
So that they say, yes, that one kept their word, we should have believed.
And a final knock for good measure.
SINCE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO LIVE
Since I don't know how to live,
I write poems.
At least there will be straight lines left of me,
even though the journey has been boundless.
Someday I will land on eternity,
having forgiven myself
that there was not much sense in me
and that even when I tried my best
I only kept tripping over my own feet.
I have pretended to tiptoe nicely,
yet have gone and crushed the furniture.
A good poem is
almost as multi-layered as life,
only not quite as long.
I have tried to fuss over it,
at least kept myself out of mischief.
And a poem can well remain
for ever, like lovemaking.
FUNERAL WORDS
We belong here,
but also in the world of stories.
A beautiful fairy tale,
each one of us.
Here only as a breath,
soon in the wind.
In the land of stories
we remain. And go on.