Onions In A Tub

Some poems, in my translation, by the contemporary Finland-Swedish poet Eva-Stina Byggmästar.


Dog grows onions in tub,
rags hang from the uppers
of a birch-bark shoe. Shoal of Baltic herring approaches
the horizon – be on the lookout, thin moon, the distance
looks like a magpie’s breast, the one with a sense
for thaws and children
who laugh – like me, like the one who is me.


*


What is white in a face, from there
comes laughter, one grasps.
Take the hoe, make
holes in the ground, many long ones. I hear
in there it murmurs before one hears other
sounds. Lets some summer come, grass grow everywhere.
Up on the hill, yes, I see you now. The ears,
the eyes, the happy sprout of the tail, like something that is just
beginning to grow. If you are sitting
there, yes you are the one. Filling your breast.
The one who coaxes out warmth
and puts right wrong and reverse. You are sitting there, yes,
now I see you, you lick me in the face,
the face of my small spirit that must not
become hard,
must not harden.


*


Fortune-hunting is done with toe-sprint
empty-handed.
If you stop now –
when find come up,
to trees with forests in their tops.
Thunder fuse just hides,
must seek long days,
comes out at new
districts, lands of the soul oh, bright sands,
shores long and short.
What does one do when one flies.
Falls, forgets, yes, that’s it.
That, downwards, but with upwards-stretched.
Yes, hands and clouds that lift.
Sails then out among stars
like that with little
pig in one’s arms,
in infinity.


*


How hen makes
the summer pass, she
smiles as so many times before.
Forgets old wounds and sorrows, yes
forgets string that is supposed to hold
her pants up, but not sister swallow
and brother trough – or be tired,
rest on the food
or sing for sun-cats that
with dazzling hearts long
for new fields
and invisible bread in invisible cottage.
—Is now pregnant
with bunny rabbit.


*


My cow
says she wants to go home
to stars oh, distant distant boats
that come ever closer while small
bush – what is that, small rowans
united in joy.
Herself bird,
half, the rest twigs and horsehair,
not much more than that.
Not much.


*

Yes, green fur coat with green braces,
lives in apple grove. Dresses in sack
with broom against haversack.
Freshly kissed cheeks, parting in hair.
But now goe out to the rock,
you who breathe fire –
To become ever greener among green,
to become a minion of the trees, a shadow merely,
happy to love them all.


*


Sleeps inside tree
with head against
what is not yet
woodchips. Wild bon vivant in nightshirt
with spruce root about waist.
Neck is trumpet,
Cannot be other,
than brass flower,
against the journey of these expanses
can do nothing but hoarsely shout –


*



Scratch makes gangway
more beautiful, for the one who owns nothing
has nothing to miss –
Sailor, listen: Smiles are food for
the one who sets off on a voyage with them.
But what do you see, I asked him
who was I? – See little dog, yes…
clear-cut ears, small, small and sunflower,
vessel ready to be used. And see
some poking fun without reason
while others travel with
joy. Who was it, you sat in
hall fallen asleep, in your arms a puppy
slept already. The one who is many,
old cloud men turning
drops on his backside. Now it’s a question
of keeping one’s chest warm
on the journey, oh all my dog-hair sweaters
on at once! Just carry a little bed
in your mouth, it weighs nothing. Yes,
and though slumbering be happy, not wait
to flow, to rush, or more –
just travel from forest to forest,
where cow is sun,
the heart moon
underneath it.