Mirkka Rekola

The sea raises you to your feet. And dead calm.this shore. Now you are in the wind of an invisible sail.

— Mirkka Rekola

The nights are no longer warm,

— Mirkka Rekola

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?

— Mirkka Rekola

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.

— Mirkka Rekola

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.

— Mirkka Rekola

OPEN: Gnats, too, are partly / air / and the swarming of seagulls / at the wind's mercy / inchoate / I walk / in front and between myself / in, out / abrupt and weary, an old heavy gate / I beat my own lintel to pieces.

— Mirkka Rekola

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

— Mirkka Rekola

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

— Mirkka Rekola

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

— Mirkka Rekola

I lower the bill of my cap stop looking / thoughts ready to go / sit in this train that's as long as the journey

— Mirkka Rekola

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.

— Mirkka Rekola

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?

— Mirkka Rekola

Two there on the beach / as close together as nostrils. / Calm sea day.

— Mirkka Rekola

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.

— Mirkka Rekola

That this time would be another, / but it is, / it is about to go under, every moment. / Facts bleed their color, / see how they break up and dissolve, / their fabric does not last; / you do see, don't you? / Not even your disaster / deserves belief.

— Mirkka Rekola

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

— Mirkka Rekola

And what about the three-year-old on the beach, in the heather: / "What if I take away the water," sand, rock / "what if I take away the sand, the rock, / the ground, the air, what then, what?"

— Mirkka Rekola

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.

— Mirkka Rekola

Driving through rain with you, / in a sea of rain / I saw only the bridges, their railings, / the passing lanes, / when the earth rose into my eyes / I heard, I heard that I had loved.

— Mirkka Rekola

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

— Mirkka Rekola

They speak their loud dialects, / Sicilians, Sardinians, / Calabrians, / they all have their own taverns. / At the other end of the alley, / on the other side / a quiet spot, / waiters and patrons at tables, / their faces, hairdos / out of Pompeii's frescoes. / Large eyes look at us, / the door does not open out, / it opens in.

— Mirkka Rekola

When you grow to become visible in the world / and build a nest / above your head / there are times when you fly up there / and it is light and swims in the air

— Mirkka Rekola