Pitkän tyvenen jälkeen

tuuli kaivoi muististaan jonkin lyhyen jutun.

Haapa havahtui hetkeksi.

Kaurapelto hymähti.

Harakka nauroi ääneen.

Pentti Saaritsa

Ehkä matka 

ei ole niin välttämätön.

Matkan idea on.

Tekemättömän matkan voi muistaa

ja tehdyn unohtaa,

mutta lähde aina matkaan

jos voit!

Ei mikään lämmitä niin

kuin huomisen matkalippu taskussa:

tuttu takki muuttuu toiseksi

lähtijän naulakossa, se on sadun

näkymättömäksi tekevä viitta.

Onni ja edesvastuuttomuus,

pako ja nurkan taa katoava lieve.

 

Pentti Saaritsa

 Writing a resumé

What needs to be done?

Fill out the application

and enclose the resumé.

Regardless of the length of life,

a resume is best kept short.

Concise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur.

Landscapes are replaced by addresses,

shaky memories give way to unshakable dates.

Of all your loves, mention only the marriage;

of all your children, only those who were born.

Who knows you matters more than whom you know.

Trips only if taken abroad.

Memberships in what but without why.

Honors, but not how they were earned.

Write as if you'd never talked to yourself

and always kept yourself at arm's length.

Pass over in silence your dogs, cats, birds,

dusty keepsakes, friends, and dreams.

Price, not worth,

and title, not what's inside.

His shoe size, not where he's off to,

that one you pass off as yourself.

In adddition, a photograph with one ear showing.

What matters is its shape, not what it hears.

What is there to hear, anyway?

The clatter of paper shredders.

Wislawa Szymborska

 Wild geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Omenan kuoressa on reikä.

Jos siihen painaa korvansa kiinni

ja kuuntelee tarkasti,

voi veden ja tuulen ääniltä erottaa

astioiden helinää.

Toukka tiskaa.

Risto Rasa