Poems
Anni Sumari
Were I ever to write a letter,
that is, if there were someone whom I would like to get a letter from me,
at least I would point out the most essential:
here there is killing and famine.
Were I ever to write a letter,
what form of address would I use?
"I" to start with, to make identification easy. Then "you", so that even the more stupid would realise they were being addressed.
A matter that concerns "you" concerns everyone. Then I would write "I" again,
because everything returns to me,
I return to me
even before the sentence has died away.
Were I ever to write a letter, I would ask in a friendly way: Are you in your right mind?
Are you still present in your feelings? Don't do what you hate.
For you know that falsehood makes one smaller, until you don't dare to look even the smallest dwarf in the eye.
You are not in despair, are you?
If you haven't freely let yourself fall into despair, how can you know what you want?
Punctual people don't need watches or wants.
People who want to start a new life shave their heads bald.
(I always get worried
when I see a lot of bald-headed people together.) An unpleasant feeling that is hard to get rid of:
that everyone else are demons.
In the shelter of the spike barrel you can say
that your development does not depend on other people.
The world would be seen more clearly if there weren't too many people,
but their number will never again fall undramatically –
they multiply like a storm, it is raining old men and women, rake-thin, conspicuous children who cannot manage.
Manage what? To pray, really!
just as parsing needs an object, so prayer needs God.
If that is so, prayer was before God. And neither has fallen silent yet.
The mind feels its own extravagance. When prayers are said it begins to rebel as it supposes that this is understood.
When it feels calm,
when the collar of calculation loosens around its neck, when an approving hand touches the longing,
when it is safe to hate
the mind feels its own extravagance.
Were I ever to write a letter, would I still inquire
if you are still unrestrainedly grieving for U, who died last summer? The long-beaked boy who promised to give you a curlew's cry,
but did not give it?
Do you remember his last words?
It's all right if you don't – it's pointless to suppose that mortals
as their last deed change their ways start to tell the truth.
It's all right – I'm sorry.
Lack of sympathy is just poverty of experience.
Of the one without pity we know
that the double thread of pity and self-pity has not strangled his throat.
Sorrow drags a bitter mother of pearl, sorrow bears a beetle's shell.
I hear your harsh grief, because you are me.
Everyone I know would portray me in different ways.
My friends, who stared at me as at a murderer when I acted against their wishes.
(Those who look at a murderer show themselves also as murderers.) As a liar I am successful, so my story is a sad one,
because I dissolve in it.
I don't know which is more difficult: to oppose or adjust? It is also not at all easy to make an honest mixture of them.
Always changing one's opinion on hearing a convincing reason is also called by an unpleasant name.
A firm, stubborn character on the contrary is thought to be sincere. As if one could only lie unconvincingly,
pretend in such a way that everyone saw through it at once.
Although I would sever my relations with everyone, new people would come, who knew nothing
of my crimes, my quarrels, they would create me anew and I could present myself again.
An emerald of lightness! Full of wings.
Were I ever to write a letter to myself, I would suggest: that you forget yourself, touch the universe! And observe, however,
that one touches the universe by means of oneself. Don't let yourself be drawn into the personal,
relationships of two. Loneliness is born of two.
At the edge of yourself, as you grow estranged from the centre, how could you return to the personal?
Is it to measure the journey a vagabond drags his rags?
If you were the world-spirit, you would be the sum of mankind and more. It is not affected by mass genocides.
Death for it is more generosity than waste; after donating their lives to it
each person adds their death to its long list!
Do you call that a world? do you have its words – do you know it,
as you received the words?
Were I ever to write a letter,
I would start to doubt that I has become you. I certainly don't oppose that kind of rebirth. The nail can hate the hammer,
not the flesh through which it is hammered.
– Translated by David McDuff