TEEMU MÄKI
Translated from the Finnish by Anselm Hollo (and Teemu Mäki)
(Lapua–Helsinki 3–5.4.1994, revised in Helsinki 3–12.9.1995)
A POEM FOR JONAH
April, and from the window I watch
the snow melting and revealing
how last year's rotten matter
bored, dutiful, calm,
yet ironically proud of its achievement
pushes up, green, to cover the ground
as grass.
I even have a godson,
unofficial, to be sure,
since I don't belong to a church
since there's no god.
Harri and Sari made the work,
whose name is Jonah.
He is ugly
but endowed with a dick
and everything else.
And fortunately, memory
lasts only as long as a human life.
Before your dreams go sour
like milk you can't drink anymore
it's a good idea to implant them
in children.
Make yogurt, so to speak.
No reason why your meanings of life
that end up in a pile of shit
should,
in your child's mouth,
taste any worse than a chocolate egg.
It's a good thing
when you manage to produce
your own gravedigger, in
your own lifetime.
That way, the corpse
won't be left to the mocking raven
but to the caressing worm.
In our little brats
we have a parachute
into death and dumbness.
Parachute that rips to shreds
a hundred yards above ground.
So you have time to admire the scenery.
That's the main thing.
Even though the homestretch ends
in a dull thud.
Flat, a preconceived image,
hence so pathetic
and tasty.
On Jonah's first birthday
his father asked me, jokingly,
to make him a present of wisdom,
good advice for life, some such.
I came up with a couple of maxims,
deeply banal:
"Life's dick is jerked off
with the hand of death"
and
"Our only duty and problem
is to have the strength
to live until we die."
I like the first one even more than the second.
The cliche is a lovely art form.
Even though I'd rather listen
to Iannis Xenakis and Samuel Beckett, any time,
right here,
sitting in this car,
cruising,
immersed in noise and bloody dishwater,
Henry Rollins and Dennis Cooper
fit the bill better.
As this poem spins out of my mouth
(not a poet's, a babbler's)
I would like to inscribe it
on Jonah's ass
with my big felt tip pen.
That's where it belongs.
I come up with a third aphorism:
"Every man is an island
but it is precisely this ocean between us
that gives us life."
And a fourth:
"Everything you can own is inside your skull."
Then, of course, number five:
"Death at Work Equals Life."
Pretty heavy, eh?
But such a blunt pen won't serve
to inscribe long wisdom
on a one–year–old ass
or grownup brainpan.
So, we'll have to choose
one of these five wise men from the east.
Let the kid's father choose.
But I'm the one who's doing the writing.
Hope it won't give the kid a rash,
this scribble,
this childishness of grownups.
Welcome, Jonah,
Oedipus, and all that.
Welcome to light up the belly of the whale.
You're burning now.
Be a tall candle.
Suck the darkness from our eyes,
it is nourishing.
Light us up.
Let's be buddies.
You, mine.
I, yours.
A toy.
Then this whale
really is a flute,
and we, in its guts,
the music
played by the emptiness
that blows through here.
Welcome, Jonah.
It's about time:
things had been getting
too fucking boring around here.