Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2004 - Ljudmila

Anni Sumari
I can’t believe my eyes,
and I find it even harder to believe God’s speech.
Besides, the only god I’ve seen
abides in art. I just entered
the world, it wasn’t too long ago,
if I were a horse or a dog, I’d be dead already,
in the human form, I dropped into the turbid
bellowing river, forced myself through
the entrance to the cave, I modified myself
to take my place in the jigsaw puzzle, I came up
to the expectations of the creators, I even adapted
myself to feel the martyrs’ pain completely devoid
of the survival instinct, not a sound is heard
from the catacombs,
and look: here
I am.
A human being raises his hands in the air
when the road opens before him.
You’ll come and see, gradually your own limbs,
your parts will tell you they aren’t
what they were promised to be on Day One:
the lips aren’t moist after all, soft, suckling,
the labia aren’t moist, soft, suckling,
your forehead isn’t high, arching, inquisitive,
the eyebrows aren’t high, arching, inquisitive,
nor the eyes, the eyes – under the low forehead
are nothing to write home about.
What do Timurlane Gorge,
the Schönberg Chorus of Vienna and
the carousels of Bordeaux have in common?
I have seen or heard them,
perceived, sensed, heard them spoken of,
I’ll take them with me. Autobiography
is the right word -
and the readers who have ventured
to talk to me, autobiography –
a childhood friend writes to me from prison
and wonders if I really am not interested
in knowing what has become of him?
A schoolmate writes from a mental hospital,
warmly, with good will, giving her best:
«Jesus will be available at Helsinki Academic Bookstore
in 2006, in case you want to see Him.
Take care that in 2017
you won’t be living in Southern Finland,
because it will be flooded with sea water.«
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