Never

wanted

that

never

wanted

to be

I

me

everything

by

chance

poem

called

a poem

pain

called

something

else

coming

going

by

itself

names

always

a trouble

but somewhere and with something you must begin

always stumbling

at words

at me

at names

at the nameless

in reality there is no MUST

there is

nothing you must begin or end

no must

no need to

exist

no needs before

you exist

need something

o

little flames

in empty space

little islands in the empty ocean

air

water

clouds

song

have more understanding

than I have

be more

than I am

in reality everything is falling we all are falling that is the same as turning around coming and going being and not being and because of that the most stupid questions are where from for what a purpose why for whose sake

 

in reality I have never wanted to speak to write poems about anything other than free fall freedom but if I want to look out there is something a snowstorm or a huge white bird taking flight I cannot say where from or where to if I want to look I am small and silly and there is a cold pane between me and the darkness and I cannot even shout into that night of snow and birds into that white birdfeather-darkness the only word that would explain everything be the beginning of everything

 

I know I am small and silly I am old and tired I was a poet I was I but in reality there was no me there was only this word this dreadful white word I have bent down to see through this evening this everlasting snowstorm to look through myself throught the dark windowpane and dark space through it all through myself and through my non-existence

 

in reality I had to write something else this something else was nearly ready but there was no beginning no beginning and no title

 

titles are not important but beginning how can something be without a beginning although I do not name it do not call it a poem a cycle of poems an elegy an incantation a spell a piece of shamanism a bullshit modern poem but beginning a beginning is

 

in reality tomorrow I should go to Tallinn to the capital to a meeting of the Writers’ Union where they will discuss problems of poetry my wife and mother-in-law ask me if I can stay at home if I can just not go whether there will be worries what people in the Writers’ union will think of me and what they should say if there is a call from the Writers’ Union

 

in reality everything is much simpler I simply do not exist have not existed for a long time already Jaan Kaplinski or whatever was his name was came drove through the snowy forest stopped to listen to the snowstorm and everything changed into birds and poems he himself too

 

let the poems themselves have a meeting let them discuss poets’ problems they know better they make somebody a poet they come if they will as they will when they will there is nothing else we should discuss at a poets’ meeting but the poems will never tell you that

in reality stupidity is as strange as wisdom but I am rarely able to understand it

 

I would like to understand stupidity

 

I would like to be absent from writers’ meetings

 

I wanted to write something that would be the same as what the shaman sings when the soul somebody’s soul is gone is astray and the shaman must go and look for it somewhere in another world and bring it back maybe it is possible to call the soul back with a song with a poem too

 

in reality I can perhaps say that this dreadful white word behind the windowpane is the soul resting there in the snowstorm head covered by the soft white wings of its own non-existence

eyes closed

dreaming of

something

 

but perhaps you are dreaming yourself and your soul a soul is longing to see you and to wake you from the other side of that darkness

 

everything is different but we can ask where from where to and why we are just coming going and falling through daytimes and nighttimes and shadows are falling on us and through us

 

I do not know whether they understand it I don’t but I feel this shadow that is more than just a shadow darkness the cold polished pane of darkness and I am small and silly and always miss the direction although I am not so stupid as to say it must be downward or downhill not to speak of life and death

 

in reality poetry is not poetry at all even less is it literature something defined obligatory something that has to be just this way and not another

 

in reality there is much more much more than sorrow and joy this getting lighter getting darker in the forest and in the apple orchard your playground and that of your children something just here that remains unknown to you throughout your life

 

and this bird this bird which I am listening to how can we summon it through this icy cold darkness

 

although I know it’s not really like that

 

but I just like being a shadow a flame in this big dark wind

 

they believed that the ladybird knew the way from one world to another so it could show the way home to one who was lost they believed that the souls of the dead visited the living

 

in poetry it would be so easy to say that I believe it too but I can’t do that because the relationship betwen ladybirds and people between living and dead is much more complicated after all unfortunately this relationship seems not to exist any more we are separated from everybody else free from everybody else from ladybirds other worlds from the dead and living from the soul from our own soul

 

and it is of little help if I write a poem or something heaven knows what with the title the soul returning if I even put a bowl with gruel in the sauna loft I still have a sauna and the sauna has a loft and it’s me who goes out in the darkness and summons the souls calls them back home

 

but the Estonian people banished their souls banished them and let pastors and priests exorcise them cut down the sacred trees and broke the stones with fire in order to get a strip of land to cultivate what else could he do the poor boor who hoped that now finally he could buy freedom that he could buy himself free with money with hard work with business with cheating with writing with singing with making music with staging plays…

 

but freedom one can buy and sell has a price its price is a signature and something more something tiny a soul a little soul that lived in a linden tree or a juniper or behind the old oven and ate a bit of everything fresh be it meat milk or new grain it was this same soul that was the price of freedom svoboda freiheit and of course of gratitude prayers songs and songfestivals

 

but to your souls to your soul you Estonian people said go away from here go to a place where the foot of man never will step and the soul answered o how could I who have lived in this tree for two thousand years have thought that I would have to leave it

 

when the soul asked you where must I go you said go to the Ghost Island the soul answered there are so many of us there already that there is no place even for a needle to stand but nevertheless you banished it

 

boor and dandy dandy and boor what is the difference who remained who has left what is the difference between God and matter heaven and hell modern and postmodern lower middle and upper middle Apolla and Dionysus pentecostal and episcopal conservative and liberal where is the soul nothing has a soul nobody has a soul

 

everything is soullless everything without a soul bread and circuses theatre and movies literature and art ideas and problems worries and victories spirit and power

 

in reality everything is so full of emptiness that I cannot understand how something can exist and last at all how can we live this life that is no life at all is nothing at all how can everything be as if nothing else existed as if this emptiness did not exist in us nor the strange little dot caught in this world-bubble where everything except us is so new still unborn still to be born where

 

angry thoughts angry words rising to the surface bubbles on black marsh water must I say welcome to you too comers and goers decaying body in decaying bed to the truth that the soul is astray and you cannot find sleep that everyone goes turns around without a soul breathing air where there is no soul or spirit left falling little by little swifter and swifter from their sauna loft sauna bench their house their car with their sauna with their car with their self through this town through this country through these streets and avenues angry comers angry goers angry streets full of angry people and angry cars rising to the surface rising or falling into an empty wind through clean dark marsh water

 

are they are we more than these thought bubbles welcome then welcome and goodbye drink us roots breathe us leaves blow us away wind blow us into this dance of dust particles that is neither better nor worse with us or without us and let us never want to be something else that something else

 

I have never been able I never could say a word without keeping this in mind however I couldn’t not say these words is it to find some ground under my feet a centre for my world a centre that does not exist that cannot exist why then do we seek it or do we seek something else something hidden under a false name in a false place a fragment of real understanding that would clear away this cataract between us and the emptimess

 

we see something but it is not light we see because we do not see light everything every one of us is a fragment of something I cannot but call light although I know there is no darkness it cannot reach there is no darkness but seen from our side everything is just fragments of darkness made of shards of light around us separating us from everything else and from ourselves words from meanings and there is no answer to the question why real becomes unreal only words words words deceptive empty words verbs proverbs adverbs nouns pronouns going on around us and if there is something connecting us it is the wind of these wings the words reach somewhere our sight doesn’t reach one can put more things together from words than there is in them or in us the words are the first cutting through this grey cataract words can sometimes take flight and arrive somewhere they call us to follow them but we don’t go we are looking for the opening that is not yet closed and when we see what is below and what is above we are frightened and turn back we cling to everything to a church tower an exclamation mark a spider’s web to stop falling into this reverberating sea of petals into billows suddenly so near and then everyhting goes off and the words some back tired and compliant as a poem or a recollection as notes on a scale or swallows on a wire and only the depth once experienced once seen remains as a humming an outstretched hand on the bottom of our memory as a cry for help to accompany us to the very end

 

empty stupid dear words who always cover my wounds with your voiceless dappled wings o light light have you spoken to me in my own tiny flakes of words

 

life is sad endless watching of the fire putting the fire to bed waking fire up from evening to evening morning to morning from generation to generation from an old house into a new house but it is always older than us we are its we are your children’s children old good sad fire burning is dying and sadness the sadness of a flame in the black eyes of the world sadness of life itself because of its beginning and after the end without a beginning and without an end simply as it is in this wonder that shines from outside into all things that shines from inside out of all things is there a time is there a name is there an eye for this sole this most wonderful thing that is

 

suddenly you discover that your world and your self have no centre you have no place which you can stand and call home these souls your own lost soul but what does this HOME mean everything is let loose and awakes into life stones into seagulls sand into sandpipers

 

and suddenly you see that nothing even yourself is either inside or outside but on the border in the present time in wind that being itself is but a border where the sparks of life thought and words light for an instant like moths which have flown into fire and then ash falls down from the blade of fire always on the side where WAS is written and from the other side come new butterflies new lives new loves and they too catch fire like moths which have flown into lamplight which means they are caught by fire burnt into ash this is beautiful and terrible the only question is who can see it is it a similar spark a speck of spacedust leaving a fiery trace seen on the backdrop of a constellation

 

and this question grows bigger grows into an eclipse covering the moon covering the stars covering meaning so that finally over your head there is only a huge black eye reflecting this awkward half-articulate question your doubt in the world and in yourself a spider’s thread coming carried by wind from somewhere on the other side which goes through all that you believed is firm and real but has not been for a long long time

 

this huge black eye of another heaven full of questions full of doubt full of the same endless thirst that no philosophy no literature no art can quench it is the thirst of the world itself of all the cells roots mouths and intestines for fire thirst of life for life this thirst and yet something else something is wrong something is false the centre is not in the centre the circle is not round a cause cannot have an effect Achilles cannot reach the turtle the arrow stands in every instant at a different place and all Cretans are liars they say it themselves as I too

 

believe no sentences including this one do not believe Jaan Kaplinski himself and his poems he hasn’t believed himself for many years now but he doesn’t know what this really means this him this self and this believing two points and a line but if neither of the points is at a certain place where is the line where am I where is self where is everything where is nothing

 

and whether you are you or me there is always something bringing every vision back into the same memory and pain

 

life-giver life-taker earth the anchor-stone the gravestone of us all big old lonely stone in the dark emptiness – who are you – I would like to ask something from you I don’t know yet what it should be but soon it will be too late

 

how easy it is to look for to find a metaphor or whatever it should be called and to let it live its own life in the hands of a poet everything then begins to move everything gets wings and becomes light on the other side under the earth the rivers flow from the sea back to the mountains and there in the mouth of an underworld river is a white rock that is as light as everything else and this stone takes flight and sings it sings for you all the songs you wanted to sing it rises the rock rises like a skylark and flies for you everywhere you wanted to fly where then of course to the southern seas no not to the palm trees and pretty girls further to the south where some islands are lost in the silence of the Pacific Falkland Macquarie Kerguelen Bouvet somewhere somewhere in the world there must be something that is unstained and new but all this is only poetry nobody believes it but why couldn’t it be true from generation to generation from age to age everything has become heavier and heavier things people rocks notes and sounds only words have become weightless and I too cannot put them back bring them back to their meanings but still this weight is not in us is not in the things this is the weight of borders it is a weight that is between us that separates us from everything the weight of names of memory of continuity of regularity the weight of this everyday thing that has been called life the weight of dust from the streets that has been ground from everything from words rocks silence ourselves something that is like a grey flour but really isn’t grey flour that maybe somewhere is called truth and reality but I cannot I cannot even for who knows when who knows when again

 

with Lembity from leole rebel chief who had his head cut off sent to Rome with four kings electedby the Estonians and sent to negotiate with the Knights and put to death by them hewn into pieces

 

in Paide Pala Muhu Tartu Tallinn Estonia Livonia Alesia Wounded Knee 

 

un-

wanted

un-

greeted

ice

death

weariness

everything

except

the

lost

soul

o

knots

tighten

I

am

falling

back

but

where

no

direction

no

centre

only

your

pride

about

having

looked

into

the eyes

of

the glacier

having told it

something

to

its

face

ah

let

it all

be

let me

my-self

stay

with

its

pride

in the

white

glittering

ice

of death

sleep

there

is