From Finland

8:08 AM Posted by James Owens

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Even nature gives you no choice.

When you have seen a cloud in the lap of a pond
and the moon between waterlilies,
you are at the mercy of your own soul.


Eeva Kilpa
(trans. Aili Jarvenpa, Salt of Pleasure: Twentieth-Century Finnish Poetry)

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4 comments:

Roxana said...

how wonderful this is! oh james thank you.

James Owens said...

You're welcome! There are many good Finnish poets, but not many people notice them (at least, not here). The translations in this book seem a bit awkward sometimes (and I nudged this one a bit, to be honest), but I think they are accurate....

Finnish, now there's a difficult language. I took a class in Finnish a few years ago, strudied hard, and I learned very little....

sam of the ten thousand things said...

I like this. Puts me in mind of Buson.

James Owens said...

Sam, I agree. It is a bit like Buson. A lot of Finnish poetry has a sense of the natural world that is a lot like the Japanese.