Timo Harju: We Watered Them Abundantly with Coffee – poems

 

Timo Harju: We Watered Them Abundantly with Coffee (Kastelimme heitä runsaasti kahvilla, ntamo 2009, 89 pp.)

[7-8]

1.

Moisture seeps through the seams of the TV set,
the grandfather clock that no longer chimes, the neatly
made bed, the photographs.
The tears flow under the door
turn down the corridor roll into the lift
then another corridor, not far to the front door now,
they’ll get out of the front door! they’ll get out!
the nurses dash after the tears   grab hold of them
and coax them back inside by force. I write
a spanner in the waterworks. a wrench.

2.

Leaving is what is hugged
like crushed blueberries.
A year ago behind that door
the nursing home director warned
that the people here
were not exactly sweet old grandmas and grandpas.
Perhaps it was a joke. 

3.

I’d like the nursing home to open,
for all the doors to evanesce
and the grannies and grandpas go fluttering out
with their wrinkles their wheelchairs
rushing bright as a spring cow pasture.
But they don’t run, so
come see the clouds in the nursing home corridors.

[11]

Ward A5, Wednesday

make breakfast sandwiches
(thin layer of margarine and one slice of ham)
wash kitchen floor
take porridge to table next to bed
pull blanket away nicely
give medications
take to WC
put on trousers
(rub legs with cream first)
put on braces
take porridge
serve porridge
get new asthma inhaler from medicine cabinet
clean and make bed
change towels in rooms
turn off TV
put on pleasant music
have coffee
carry chest of drawers to basement
make lunch sandwiches
take residents’ laundered clothes to closets
read newspaper aloud
put spoon in open mouth
(if the upper denture falls out, it may need
more adhesive powder and pushing
firmly)
wipe purée off table and from under table
do the washing-up
sneak a couple of biscuits from the kitchen cupboard
find dead grandma on floor of room
(plastic bag on head and telephone cord)
serve afternoon coffee
(two black and fifteen white
though now only fourteen white)

[13]

Ward A5, Thursday

The clouds in the nursing home corridors, sky-open springlike after a bathe
and forgotten, in a frayed blue dressing-gown beside an osiery.
The grannies in the nursing home corridors, the last beautiful pride
you keep in a small wooden box behind your forehead:
if the lid opens by accident all the things may drop to the floor
topsy-turvy you won’t be able to find them, your back won’t let you
you won’t recognise them any more even if you do,
the springtime tears your insides to pieces.
Here they come, the grannies.
Better to stay here indoors, the journey to the dining room is a rough one
exposed like this
a long way and all by sleigh.
You stare at the keyhole: the clouds are coming.

[16]

From the sofa a voice was heard: “Suffer the old to come unto me, and forbid them not.”
And on the second day: “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as an old person shall in no wise enter therein. ”
The old people’s home is the strange hand of God with which he strokes his thinning hair,
a sudden shower of cackling in the dry linen closet, a bit sad and lonely
God looks out, stirring his cup of tea as though it were on fire.
Had Jesus lived to grow old and gone into an old people’s home
He would have been like these.

[20]

Ward A5, Saturday

Each morning the nurses pull on rubber boots and leave
for the dark dark, for a dark swamp, in the dark swamp
when the gnarled pines howl, only a pack of diapers for a lamp.
Cotton-grass on granddad’s head, violence and homesickness they leave
for the dark swamp, with all their sighs and strained nerves
along hands elbows into the bogholes. They bake cakes
and open the oven door into the night, to make it cheerful with the smell.
A prize would be nice, but the nurses aren’t on the winning side.

[21]

Ward A5, Sunday

I can milk the cows. You don’t need to bother about it at all.
Of course, it must be done at once. I’ll go and do it now.
You can have your coffee in peace, and take that medication.
Yes, I know how to milk, I’ll take your memory in my hands.
Although I am only a boy. Don’t worry, granny.
I can ask Leena to come with me, Leena has done a lot of milking.
You cry in perfect peace. I’ll milk those cows.

[31]

Yes.                                         The old woman tells me her tales of the seasons’ heartbeats. She tells me of rooms breathing through my tales, tells through the rooms and the breathing her stories of hips, joints, back. They are loosed and set free and they run outside, she lies under her quilt under her nightgown, as the tale’s end is beneath the tale. The stunned nursing home lies on the ground like a bird flown against the window. She picks it up in her wrinkled hands. She carries its pain like a dream of her own that belongs to no one else, in her voice the shadows of snowflakes collide lightly writing the garden, of shadows, of grass that whirling flowering darkens away, hidden in the grass a bird, hidden in the bird the wind I walk to the toilet to fetch water, the floor bears me as I walk, up to my knees in the dream.

[32]

Perhaps at this very moment your bed is freeing itself from its roots and clattering into the elevator, then down and outside to the shore of the lake. Sighing your bed plunges into the water. With calm strokes of all of its four legs your bed swims out to the middle. You notice that there’s a fishing rod beside you. You thought you had lost it seventy years ago, but apparently not! The float sinks below the surface, you are scared it will go all the way to your childhood, that a terrible, mighty bream will rise up, that your father will shout at you yet you won’t dare to strike the bream why is Dad still shouting pliable wriggling blood in the palms of your hands you go and hide under the covers. Even as you hide there, you know. That the rod is still jerking.  How could you not take a peek. You take one. The summer floods under the covers and you realise that it isn’t like that. A lake yes a lake is full of light. You grab the rod with both hands. It tugs the bed and you and everything else below the surface. Circles spread in the calm water. Would you like to go and brush your teeth or would you rather sink into the light with your bed?

[39]

A dark toilet. Dingy clotheshangers. Dingy woollen blanket. At least five water mugs in different parts of the room. A dent. A wisp of hair. A wind. A white, flameless candle. The door a wobbly  milk tooth. A crackling, a corridor. Blind stairs. Let loose.

[49]

Come let’s build a home for old folk. Let’s build it from the crooks in fingers, lightly porous bellyaches, we  can take the armfuls of fir needles and bright cuckoo fluff up to the attic. Let’s make a lot of mossy rocking chairs, they can rock in them. Let’s collect gazes and make them into coffee cups, you old folk can paint the flowers of your lives on them, at the first lunch hour Martta is the first to announce that there’s too much porridge and she doesn’t eat anything. I go to reduce the portion. The porridge observes: “If you start to give in, everyone’s lives will soon be impossible here.” The kitchen nods, swaying. Do the old folk need limits? 
They’re not children. So are they able to set their own limits? 
Far away you can see bundles of mist drifting into the watercolour. 
Are the porridge rules security lights in the water? 
The traffic lights are there to stop the cars from touching one another. 
Will I affect her if I reduce this portion of porridge now? 
You’ll get rid of her more quickly if you do what she asks. 
Shall I reduce this portion of porridge or not? 
Don’t ask me. 
Should we educate old people? 
You’re right, old people can learn new things too. 
Or should I just make this moment as easy as possible? 
You’re right, they don’t have much time left. 
Huh? What do you want of me? 
Don’t be afraid.

[50]

Collect the flour falling from old folk. Bake a skilled attendant. 
The skilled attendant is direct and honest, frankly 
says now I’ve had enough and could you please buzz off. Stretch the dough. People work is open in the middle. 
Fetch hundreds and thousands from the cupboard to fill his head. 
Raise, roll, rotate, twist 
press your hands on his heart. 

[71]

I want to write ofyouforyou, a portrait.
Can I write about you if I don’t dare read this to you? 
I’ll try. Now it’s May 25, Ascension Day. I haven’t been
to the nursing home for six months. I don’t know if you’re alive or if you’d remember me. I remember you mostly as a little stone: a warm skimming-stone in children’s hands, 
the earthworms loosened your heart for good cheer,
but it doesn’t help, we don’t know why
you convulse around me absently, at one corner of your mouth there’s foam. 
you dissolve in the blows of your stick, start to cry and howl blindly in all directions. 
Wisdom is affection is gone, is a rocking chair
that flies, and you are no more. 

[72]

shoes, bedspread, reading lamp, window, snake-plant, pile of house picture magazines. three postcards from grandchildren. canary islands, china, pargas. water jug. water mug. juice jug, juice mug. back braces. spectacles. smell. diarrhea. buttoned shirt. trousers. socks. come through. Thank you. empty ceiling. empty floor. plastic mat. sticky stain. next to table leg. battery clock. walls. entrance to WC. door. window. afternoon.

[75]

Hilma is a lozenge box full of talk, rattles and rustling
to herself at the table.
One morning I went into her room: LOZENGE STORM

[76]

Granny in a cardigan that’s fading
slowly evanescing
hands before her on the table
lost in warm grey reflection,
rocking snowflakes in hair’s cradle
eye-sockets full of snow.

[81]

Always ready, always there.
All the way to cruelty, helplessness already.
She is a mere already.
Already.
Absolutely indeed. There she sits.
Stately as a plate of sausage soup.
On the prowl. Rushing motionless in her place
faster than the passing children,
a breakwater, a speechless heap of stones.
When we reach the shore, she trots willingly
towards us offers us her face:
a cleansed light framed by white hair,
thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin,
thin, thin,
thin, thin, thin, thin,
thin, grannyice, covered in snow.

[83]

You are so pleased when I say to you Hello Erkki,  I give my hand into your hands.
Your eyes you old dented ice-hole angler.
Helplessly eager your nod when I ask if you play solitaire.
When I try to help you with the six-piece puzzle you’re quick to lose your temper.
The name of the creature in the puzzle is a horse. Yes, you say.
I paint out your ice-angling prize.
I paint out the suspenders in the wardrobe and the teeth in the mug.
I paint milk over everything I have drawn.
All that remains is the room smudged with white finger-paint
which breathes. You can go there, if you want.
You did.

[89]

He falls to the floor of his room. He falls to the floor of the shower. He falls on top of the nurse. He falls when he tries to open the door. He falls on a sharp corner. We carry them all to his bed. There he lies seeking a position for his pain. You had sat up in bed. I wanted to tell you that the world is beautiful, I even did. You sat on the mercy of your bed, looked out of the window. You said: ‘Yes, of course nature is there. Very close to me.’

[94]

You stumble you tumble, you don’t find your way home, 
the vaults of your tongue collapse. The hut of speech falls from the tree, 
the shed of words ignites and burns in spring’s forest fire, 
the forge of sentences is cold and still, you crouch, don’t rise, 
scratching your nose with your absent mind. A nose that’s quite some size. 
Goodbye nose. 

All round let’s sing, make papillotes, we’ve 
time for lots of bedtimes, many plates of stew, 
much talking. 
while, carefully you
bent double 
for hours and hours, 
pick the crumbs from your pants
goodbye your pants that hold you in
goodbye your veins that keep you full of blood
goodbye your insides wriggling in a sack of skin.

Now, heap of wrinkles and furrows, I want to say 
goodbye by having an early night, 
by making my hands go every which way. 
I start to wave in the empty room, goodbye goodbye…
How to say it, tomorrow you may not be here. 
Your toenails, your dry soles, the fallen arches of your feet,, 
your swollen ankles will be gone, your listless painful calves, their skin,
your knees, your knee joints, resting place of hands on thigh, 
the thinning hair, the yelping tremors of your legs, 
your worn out willies, dented hips 
and all the body’s other scrips and strips. 

When I asked you to get your stick from your room 
you came back leaning on a toilet brush. 
Hallelujah you cried when you couldn’t remember hi-de-hi. 
You don’t cry hallelujah any more. Apart from that I don’t know much. 
I’ve seen a photo album, which is hidden well,
so you won’t shred more photos in your zeal 
yes and I’ve seen the harmonica you could sometimes play,
I’m here in my overalls, and so are you. 
Which is why I’m saying goodbye to you. 
I’m trying not to sit on top of you. 

Goodbye your memory which I don’t know. 
Goodbye your memory which you don’t know. 
Goodbye chairs, carpets, ceilings, cabinets, 
goodbye path of rooms, shadows of objects 
whose flowering the others didn’t see. 
Why the hell have you gone and broken now?

The care home’s in a mess old women burst from heads, 
the stuffing rolls down the corridors hairy and sprattling 
shy and smarting and kicking and sparkling and 
softly eyeglass-like screaming prattling
and why has the stuffing in your head run out?
Why hasn’t your life stopped, is some soul alive in you instead? 
What is really going on here? 
goodbye your stooped and crazy mornings 
goodbye your squelching 
goodbye your vulnerable tenacity 
goodbye your name 
goodbye your nameless you 
Look
a closet bright with clouds 
you can flap your hands 
Bye bye airy reeds, and sea and sky,
suspenders stuck in a wc. goodbye. 

Translated by David McDuff
First published in Books from Finland 19 August 2010