Juha Kulmala: 3 Poems

Poems by Juha Kulmala

Highbrows

           after the film
we go for a pint and talk about love
how the music and light in its scenes
                        the intense rhythm of the dialogue
           manipulate the voyeur, and how
there’s nothing original & new in it
           and after love
we go for a pint and talk about death
how there’s enough space
           between the end credits and the prologue
                        to hold an illusion of a century
           as if it were personally experienced
and how such linearity is not
                        interesting
           and after death
we go for a pint and talk about films
how outside the events, in the gloom, everyone yearns
for the profound caressing light which
            reflects off the nacre of the screen and the moribund
                        bubbles in beer glasses, under the fringe and
            under the brow even though it’s all only
a loan and we talk the same way
                        the primal men talked, only a moment ago when
the blazing shadow of a hand climbed up the cliff while the fire was
                                                                                                    rending the night

                        but the one who invented the fire also invented the dark

and we won’t leave the realm of all these words unless compelled
                                                                                       by an unendurable hunger

Translated by Sarka Hantula

Excerpt from “Petropolis”

yes, it would be easy
to evade history and discuss
             individual cases instead, tragedies, sweet agonies
                        of love, wonders of an innocent intercourse
                        yes,
it would be easy to evade politics, to commend, let’s say,
                                      this meal without mentioning
the nationality of the cuisine and what else is cooking
over there, and over here too, is it coming to the boil
             it would be
easy to praise the vodka, the bringer of joy
without describing the stained basin blocked with vomit
             it would be easy to linger
in the enhanced attraction of a young beauty, in the
sense of destiny in the young man’s grave face
                                      under the uniform cap
                         and not to admit having in mind
                                                                such words as
willingness, usability, servility, exploitability, live materiel

it would be easy to compose
a scene with a bridge, a palace, summer night & winter light, an artist
                                                   just before he, or she, is taken away

it would be easy to describe
the nature over there, how delicate
and perfect, grand surge of freedom
             while it still exists, and don’t look that way, look this way

it would be easy to just play with words and not with one’s health

it would be easy, if only
one had all the brain diseases and diseases of the heart, if one were
                                                   blind and senile and deaf

*

here, close-by
a birch forest full
of fallen trunks of trees like corpses, buried
corpses like tree trunks
of citizens of a wonderful imaginary land
             all rotted now, turned into soil
                                                    of the State

here, closer
blocks of the city in the dusk
like sugar in weak tea, a place
where a poet decided to die
but failed, squealing mikes, great northern lotus flower, pig
                         and anti-pig staring at each other
             through the wrongly installed glass, I pat a horse
that’s alive, wouldn’t touch a dead one
                                                    from a bronze one
                                                                I’d surely run for my life

             real laws don’t need any militia
             to force them through; old grannies
                         in backyards
                         feed the cats
                                     because the cats are hungry

Translated by Juha Kulmala

Not Far Afield

             in the eastern mountains, in the mountains
                         of the west, again and again
             they reinvent gunpowder and steel
                         guerillas in the south, bald heads
                                                    smeared with shit, dinosaur eggs
                                       the renaissance
                                       of roasted virgins
and it’s not far afield but just
behind the mall, there they crawl
to maintain our standard of living, the men
             will crawl until they turn into little boys and
                                                                            shatter
                                                                 to see
             the world like the old Adam for the first time and feel
             the glow of the flaming sword on the back of one’s head
this is how I see old
             Lady Justice
                          ascend the hill, maybe a Caucasian mountain, maybe
with cheap Malaysian trainers, an old wide figured woman
                                       groaning shoulder pole with weighty
                          cold water of bad deeds in one bucket, in the other
              water of good deeds just as weighty and cold, the back
                                                                 will break soon, the foot
              will stop leading when the ground fails, and the ground
                                                    shouldn’t fail, but there isn’t
                                       a single book
              where the truth is true
as true & handcrafted as the lace of houses that the grenades stitch
                                       covering up the brides, as the raunchy
                          rococo gods on television and armies
of the gods, when you look closer
              all the armies are ours
armies of thieves
the Euro-American and Chinese thief, Russian Arab and
                                       Finnish thief, the almighty golden boy
              and there won’t come a time to repent
                          or make amends, there will only come a time to
                                                                 hang, open and quiet
              to hang from a mountain tree, from a crow tree like a broken
                                                                                          brown branch
                                                    and there, right behind the shopping mall
                                        clink clank
                                                    revival style wind chimes, and the wind
                                                                                          will eventually tell
                                        when it’s time to fell the tree, to make firewood
                           for the winter and start baking, patching, and tear
                                                                  every flag into rag strips
                                                                  and the last pages; a revelation
                                                    is everything that lives regardless
                                                                              and lives regardless of us

                                                                              *

                           at the end of the TV night
when porn soldiers have killed everybody and it’s time
to discuss the mysteries of the human soul
                                                    I’d just like to soar
                                                    silently above the camp fires of the city
                                                    to see what won’t be televised
                            to see people retire to rest, knowing
                           what they’ll do the next day and
                                                                  wanting that
                                        to see animals
                                        retire to rest or wake up
                                        and do what they want to do
                            to see the lights go out
                                        all over Europe
                            and then being turned on again
                                                    one by one, less dazzling
                                                                              less crowded
                                                                                           less afraid

Translated by Juha Kulmala