THE WESTERN GLIDE
Threads of northerly wind
in the branches of a willow,
I stalk the ice between the shadows
my eyes stream,
old bearer of spring
now melting,
I will find myself
lying in the high grass
a reed-bed foundling,
a wetland shiver,
I am again
here,
a warbler’s nest,
the stems unending.
Mathura. Emptying–Filling. Courtesy of the artist
TWO VISIONS
I
It’s not quite from sleep that I wake up
every morning, to see things swap places,
meanings tear – to see the land swell,
bushes roll like the tide, hear the wind
whistling somewhere in my head,
white daisies, feathers, the immensity
of greenery.
Then all stops,
thickens to a word I’m unable to utter.
Every morning I wake, the world
has gained or lost a dimension,
and I need to keep on looking for a grip
in this truth that appears and dissolves,
or dissolves and appears … A motor boat.
Heather that is blooming. A rocket base.
Once all this area was closed,
but now it is open and empty. A squall
of Arctic terns – the space between the land
and sea, the space between …
II
Gnats, the sky bristling its seraphs,
clouds as relative, the rowans blooming,
the air thickening and with such insects –
the view here, from this lookout,
falls from me, like words on a crumpled page,
without conclusion or finality,
losing it all, but still not changing.
Buds falter on the tattered ground,
dissolve into new blossoms.
Daylight horses gallop
where the storm is going, where the road tapers.
The muck clatter of hooves.
Butterflies fold and desiccate,
chrysalises moisten again,
into dust, and atoms
you and all that matters.
THE FOREST OF IGNATEVO
I
Be it only for a day or two, I wish
to take this time to live together
in a house that holds nothing
but dark walls and butterflies.
Oak and apple trees surround it,
adders nest in the moss
and some voice keeps on knocking in my head,
’Let every miracle be simple.’
It isn’t dumb, this house, no,
but not everybody makes sense
of what it is saying. Wind comes skidding
across the grey meadows, sleep touches your eyes,
again and again you fall
and yet you don’t sense any danger.
You know that sleep is real
that it stares right in through filthy windows.
Speechless, you gaze back
and accept the universal darkness.
Be sure then, this house
will save you after all.
II
Remember the winter? It is not before midsummer
that I return into the forest, to the house,
to the beautiful, vast nothing enveloping the garden
in its abundance or rant, hay reaching to the chest
as lupins blossom in its midst, drunk on wild jasmine –
but the weight of December’s snow persists.
An old apple tree is broken in two, both branches in leaf,
little fruits popping. ‘Oh don’t I know it,’ I say then.
Don’t people break the same over their own winters,
barely keeping their branches together, and yet,
as summer comes, they bear fruit again to those willing to taste them,
to have their fill, as if nothing had changed from last year to this.
DARK GREEN
By the edge of a ragged coastline,
a frozen track of roedeer prints,
the forest like a sea ablaze,
this autumn merciless as much as it is
perfect, your own care – or unconcern –
little more than the sky ripped open,
with the tattered white of leaving swans,
yet itself grey, darker green later;
there it is that you return to,
see the sea grow raging,
light has almost ceased to be.
SISKIN
Opposite the cemetery gate,
I found a dead siskin
by the roadside
I lifted her
and made a nest of dry leaves
around her
dead leaves around
a dead bird with a living meaning
her eye still keeping me in sight
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mathura is an Estonian poet, writer and artist, the winner of the Gustav Suits Poetry Award and the Virumaa Literary Award for the year’s best historical novel. He has published a dozen books and his work has been translated into several languages. He has held exhibitions at the Estonian National Library, the Viinistu Art Museum and elsewhere.