Eeva Kilpi's lovely ‘A landscape blossoms’ portrays a kind of inner migration in which
there is a sacramental melding of the poet’s own mortal human life course with
the world of nature. Inner and outer time become realigned, in a luminous
vision that ends with a joyous affirmation of human time becoming irrelevant.
The imagery of the ruined house and the stones draws on the abandonment of
houses left behind in the lost land of Karelia. Without wishing to stretch the resemblances
too far – since the two
poets have different ways of ‘repopulating’ a deserted landscape – for a
Scottish reader Kilpi’s re-imagining of time and reframing of ruin may seem to
have something of the transcendental quality of Sorley MacLean’s ‘Hallaig’.
A landscape blossoms within me
and only its evanescence
separates it from the nature all around.
The two are merging together,
melting into each other with no boundaries
and the place where my soul’s house once stood
is becoming overgrown,
Only a few stones that I’ve heaped
on the shoulders of those close to me
will be there, gathering moss,
and maybe a rose, a midsummer rose
will bloom amid the long hay,
and the achillea and the iris and the apple trees
will grow from the seeds that I’ve let fall
beside the path, on the way to the sauna,
and maybe the butterflies, from generation to generation,
of all things the most fragile,
and my adder and my lizard, and my frog
will be happy here.
At last it will belong to them entirely
as was meant from the start.
It’s past now, this time
of humans at the centre of things
and the era of nature is beginning in me now.
My dreams are coming to pass like a resurrection
and everything bears witness to the faith.
and only its evanescence
separates it from the nature all around.
The two are merging together,
melting into each other with no boundaries
and the place where my soul’s house once stood
is becoming overgrown,
Only a few stones that I’ve heaped
on the shoulders of those close to me
will be there, gathering moss,
and maybe a rose, a midsummer rose
will bloom amid the long hay,
and the achillea and the iris and the apple trees
will grow from the seeds that I’ve let fall
beside the path, on the way to the sauna,
and maybe the butterflies, from generation to generation,
of all things the most fragile,
and my adder and my lizard, and my frog
will be happy here.
At last it will belong to them entirely
as was meant from the start.
It’s past now, this time
of humans at the centre of things
and the era of nature is beginning in me now.
My dreams are coming to pass like a resurrection
and everything bears witness to the faith.
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