september

Silver birches ripple leaves, tiny ensigns
yellow and green, like ladies’ hankies waving

goodbye! blowing kisses, goodbye! from ships’ railings.

Perfidious sky: now bright, now scumbled,
now race-clouds galloping, by morning

air ambrosial, essence of leaf, wet woods, loam.

Weather fouls again, a hard wind vixen gnaws my cheek,
drizzle, a low-throated growl;

pigeons panic across the mackerel sky.

In the deep blue pre-dawn
moths jitter about a streetlamp,

Venus, Jupiter shine white blessings.

and a zephyrish wind whispers,“Stay. Stay.”

***

october

Snowless, grey, muddy, blear;
leaves flee their trees, lashed across
woodland paths, rain-smashed to dross –

upon us now, deadhouse time of year.

Bone-white horizon, a full setting moon,
bone-white the sun rising into brume
vex, embrace me to the coming chill –

drear, mythic, augury of a world gone still.

***

November is the Finland of the months.

I love this language, unlike any other:
Affricative Ts, uvular Ks, sibilants, trills,
all letters equal, first syllable takes
the downbeat:

Kalevala
Kotka
Esa-Pekka Salonen, famous conductor.

A-one, a-two, a-three: yksi, kaksi, kolme,
fresh young thing on TV red-mouths
the ancient castle-city’s name: Tuu rr kuu
ululates the weather: alavilla mailla hallan vaara:
“In lowlands, danger of night-frost.”

All Saints’ Day: families flock to cemeteries
– Lutheran, Orthodox, Muslim, Jew –
light candles in jars, lay pine boughs, pots of heather,
trowel the earth for bulbs, rake gravel;
reverence, adieu, to ones brought together.

Our elderly cousin relishes Advent dark.
It rests her eyes, she says, no one expects
her to be glad. Her world prepares for sleep.

First snow! Candle-lanterns hung from branches,
night air snapping like iced champagne,
people almost giddy.
The radio plays “Finlandia”,
words thicken in our throats.

***

december

Sun dusts the south horizon like a lazy servant yawning,
who by two or sooner calls it quits, lets light go a filmy grey.
Here, they say, two seasons only:
beginning June twenty-one, December twenty-one.
I’m relieved to know the end is near.

Years ago at Hanukkah
we lit candles in the kitchen,
bravely singing
MAOZ TSUR YESHUATI
– O mighty stronghold of my salvation –
to avert wild beasts, wilder men.
Here, local girls steady tapers on their heads,
precarious homage to Saint Lucia —
virgin, martyr — who extinguished outer light
and carried her eyes on a plate; while I
— genetic scion of manifest depressives —

sit in the dark, spooning raisins and almonds
soaked in warmed glögg, watching candles flicker
hung from trees in glass reliquaries, feeling –
dare I say this – happy.
Maoz tsur.

***

ostrobothnia, january, 62.9 degrees north

Rehearsing for isolation. Interior exile.
The wind blows, the roof shudders, windows
oscillate like ships in a squall. Then snowfall,

yielding only sounds of blood pulsing in the ear.

Rehearsing for isolation, interior exile,
long shadow-lights dawn and dusk,
with an ember of a low-humped sun between.

It snows: Steadily, stealthily as the day darkens,

welcome in that tenderness of dark, candle lanterns
on the porch comforting passersby against
the razor blue water between archipelagoes of ice

heaving like a nascent beast.

Pine, juniper, spruce – dialects of green –
dappled birch skin, snow-filigreed firs
dressed entirely in white like the wilis,

spirits of abandoned brides who seek revenge.

Under flat sky a half-crazed woodpecker
hammers away at telephone poles, crows mass in trees,
magpies rattle on like runaway typewriters –

and tidings at dawn: paw prints have nibbled the house.

They call it gas frost: mist suspended over fields and roads,
a sublimation of snow. They call it lakeus: ‘flat vista,’ but more:
the soul-pain of remembrance, a vision across

empty fields with one tree, one house against the horizon.

I distrust summer, treacherous friend,
demanding we be alive, joyful – promising beauty,
immortality: lush, fruiting. It’s winter I trust, when we are dead,

and it feels strangely gorgeous, fine, really fine.

***

february

under the comforter we hibernated
clinging like cubs and sow
even as our stomachs growled

one day a wonderment
the asbestos curtain parted
we discovered we’d endured

what matter new turbulence new freeze
we’ve marched across the gelid seas
banners rippling bugles drums

and listened when
lintu lauloi illalla sinisellä sillalla:
‘a bird sang in the evening atop the blue bridge’

***
march
rites of return

Frigid brilliance dissolves into spring,
warming to nothing under a north-homing
sun. Small survivors sound territorial
calls: the black-bibbed’s arboreal
GreattitGreattitGreat, the willow tit’s wheeze,
and serins return to pick at scattered seeds.

Palm Sunday on the equinox –
alas, returning too soon, Karelian skylarks
found frozen on a ship from Istanbul.

My deadpan neighbor back from Spain
stares blankly because, a friend explains,
Finnish men are harried by doppelgängers
whispering from behind, “You’re not…so hot.”

Oh my dearest, when you left to shop, I forgot to look up.

***
april
on the helsinki metro

Ruoholahti – The April sun raises its leg over the land, marks the
boundaries, trots off to the woods to nibble at tender yellow
buttercups.

Kamppi – It wasn’t always so. Oppressed from the west, ruled
from the east, birthed in blood, baptized in blood, bread made
from bark and prisoners ate grass.

Rautatientori – Platform busker chimes a xylophone,
Underground Pan making travelers syncopate. Peek inside
a Finn, find a heart palpitating in tango. Cell phone chatter
from a taciturn people.

Hakaniemi – Here on the market square Red great-grandfathers,
White great-grandfathers slaughtered one another. No one
has ever forgotten or forgotten to remember.

Hertoniemi – I call it the land where not much happens. Oh yes,
Man caught stealing motorbike. Wasn’t wearing helmet.
It wasn’t always so. How do you moan in “decent?” How do you put eyes out for “safe?”
How do you burn “fair” into everyone’s skin?

Myllypuro – To my Finnish friends who may someday read
these lines let me say the words I mean: “I love you.” Okay,
I think well of you. Okay, I came here, didn’t I? No twice
without a third.

Kontula – Poignancy means pain in feeling, to be stabbed
each summer at the heart, a bear grinding bone, tearing sinew,
slavering lips of Time.

Rastila – Especially her mouth, full, red, dimpled lips. Her
eyes, oci cernye, make me not to notice islands still wrapped in
April’s snow waiting for white sails to kiss the horizon.

Vuosaari – Spring is only birds returning – skylark, chaffinch, wagtail, thrush – a crocus or two, old snow melting the new, a yellow flower beneath a tree in a desolate wood, and light
— Light! Light!

***
may

for two months now: leaf! leaf!

and so they do –
oh, a hedge or two may hedge,
and people blossom on the esplanade

seven balloons tethered together
break free, swarm, last seen heading east
to Karelia, to Viipuri

swallows sing;
it is almost warm

***

midsummernight

lilac
i intoxicate. inhale me. everyone
adores me. i’ll never go brown.

lily of the valley
you show-off! i prefer to be loved
the way a perfume lingers in a room.
my return is ritual. be glad.

wild columbine
glad? yes. yet strange to be named
dove, holy spirit.
with my head bowed what else to say but
thank you, the way one waves goodbye
to the beloved, the figure growing lighter
with each step, turning to blow a kiss one last time,
and another last time, and another.

star thistle
i once occupied whole fields of rye,
my blue filaments rippling over green carpets
sprayed now to oblivion. Lupin, heal me.

lupin
“wolf” to you old thistle –
bitter, bitterer, bitterest.
consider the book of life:
chapters at the end ripped out,
pages from the beginning
sullied by tears, veiled by shadow.

forget-me-not
and yet… and yet i remember the time in paradise
when god strolled by, i was so shy
i couldn’t speak my name
so he renamed me, saying,
“Remember me and i shall not forget thee.”

chorus
together we compose a civility:
safe from one another yet
pleasuring in company,
drunk in a city of light.

what does death matter?
we have blossomed.

***

ne me quitte pas

A dream. A dream I dreamt I dreamed.
The gate of ivory shuts behind me.

A friend writes from Finland:
Here, perfect summer! Lakes warm enough
To swim, wild strawberries smear our lips.

I’m beguiled by the woman
Crossing the road, mad for the woman
Who shows at a top-floor window.
I was expelled. What did I do wrong?
I spent the small-numbered hours of the night and now

knock knock knock knock

To be let back in. Fugitive love.
Not now. Perhaps never.
But come in, have coffee, a bun.
Not Callas, but Louhi, Mistress of North Farm —
You were in love once. It did you no harm.

Seven balloons have returned from spying out the world.
Somewhere, a president eats a human heart for breakfast.
What have you done with mine?