This
–Aila MeriluotoUnder my hand
the sea of breathing swells.
A warm, restful land.
Deep winds the blood
and high: the ramifying veins
are filled with the huge wind’s sigh.
I listen, I admit: it is.I don’t speak about this.
Evening Mood
–Aila MeriluotoIt’s widening:
an evening like a sigh –
languidly spreading across the land.
The tree’s unclothing
its branches of their colours, darkening.
As if something somewhere
were ringing and ringing –
a song straying like an orphan.
The words seem
something I’ve heard:
‘only a shadow –
only a shadow of a dream’It’s slipping away. It’s dwindling.
Everything – everything – I’ve been given
I’ll give away.
Maternita
–Aila MeriluotoSo this is why everything was shaped,
the pelvis’s fine, shy curve
and the roseate fragile line of the soul.
Not for the somewhere melodious
immaterial smile of a passing god.
No. For this:
to form a gate, for a stranger to come in,
that first stranger, the ur- stranger.
And out of which will go, into the world,
other strangers, inconsequentially,
without a glance, setting their courses
towards their particular fates, driving away.Expediency, ah – ah flesh –
not inviolate, slowly mouldering,
ah violated soul, rending from itself,
continually, a new soul,
and recovering only to rend itself again.
Scarred soul, where love, even,
is a utility, inescapable, for purpose-designed.Life uses you. Just like that, unceremoniously,
with a sneer at best, makes use of, tosses away.
And if some corner remains untouched,
it’s no longer any use. A corner of a soul – yes.
Not tragic. Just useless now.
New
–Aila MeriluotoA love: merely a sea
surging through the limbs, a sea of blood
with skin-hairs swaying like water-plants;
under the abundance a hard dry pain, submerged:
today under our boat –
a noon shadow?
a deep-down black palm supporting us:
ebony, plated with waves,
beautiful, from here, already.