Esa Mäkijärvi: Ten poems from Nightclimber
“And springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot.”
– Arthur Rimbaud
1. Night glasses
In the night glasses the water stays, the surface shivers,
runs as the natural light touches the surface
and passes the water without touching it,
in the night glasses the water stays, the surface shivers,
something drives by as the movement forces us to the
same pace and somehow we can’t stand still,
in the night glasses the water stays, together they can’t stay,
touches the pure surface without a trace that
they are moved by the same thing as us by the same time.
2. A dream is sad when it says
A dream is sad says and if there is love there is also something else
a man has fallen after seeing too much sleep and he falls to a lap
which is soft which is a belief of eternity which is something beautiful
the sad arrival of a dream without its wings it is difficult to fly
without a woman whose walk itself is poetry and her wings are black
signs of a good night are soft are far too easy to forget
are the color of red are music are look at my hands they are on fire
a sadness keeps me alive while breathing is difficult they
one they two they three they as long as there are fingers those
long journeys to somewhere which is not a destination anymore
but perhaps even a home.
3. Nightclimber
Nothing is as real as the night not night
as a loneliness
as a blue thought as a dark blue thought
as an enormous room which is this
day
and nothing is as unreal as the not-night not night
as a loneliness
when he has turned towards the darkness and stands there
it is so perfect.
4. I’ve seen the roses stripped
I’ve seen the roses stripped; their beauty is not the same
from the below as from the top,
their lukewarm red has mortality in it
and the two sides of the rose live in between two eternities
ever fearing which side triumphs,
the red veins full of moving or stopped blood,
the opening of roses is like heavens; the give their unbelieavable
beauty and then stop.
5. Separate
To separate you from the stars is difficult when you are one of them
and night is not of any specific color,
light comes and goes
smile comes and goes
we the soft ones fall to each others arms like we were certain
of the hands that catch us
we come from above
we are from the above
very slowly we abandon each other until the light rages
and we find each other again
in the dark
from the darkness.
6. A light
If the light goes out there will be no more light
but maybe that is just what makes a ligh-
t so
(the cold poetry that climbs the thigh)
and precisely at that moment the mystery of ligh-
t begins to solve itself when a man looks
at the end of his hand and counts his fingers.
7. Those who have remained at the traces
Her eyes are like opened fruits,
left behind by other senses,
paths left unwalked
we are traces at the surface of rust,
the rivers of dark waters,
the traces of walked
paths.
8. We sit here lonely although there are two of us
The petals of your eyelashes floated at the surface of the
fountain like two lonely pupils fallen out of your blue eyes
and I picked them up with two hands. You blew to my hair
when it couldn’t keep up with you. I remember when
you hanged to my every word like they were treasures
and the ochre of your fringes fell down the stairs one step at a time.
I wanted to take your black spots to a spoon,
carry them away and eat them in the frost of the evening.
The fountain threw water to the sky and to our shoulders,
your hair were a wet dream that no one else would never find out,
last night I sleeped alone:
if I were a watch I’d stop visiting you.
9. The sky
The sun darkened into a small black ball with the sky around shaking.
A man demanded mountais and rivers to come to him
but the mountains and the rivers watched him quietly.
10. Afterwards
Her eyes are pearls now in the dryness of the sky.