Pauli Tapio - HALTIALA / TERIJOKI

An experience of absence, thunder in the universe, and lightning strikes
from star to star, the nether network flashes, an after-image remains,

questions, and all the disarrayed senses gather together, here,
a notion grows from being, a hill molded by an ice age

or a small forest to imagine oneself in and see, with eyes
open and closed, in two places at once, in the sky, on the earth

the footsole’s certain observation climbs to the top of the body, becomes
a belief, and the visible breaks up into the seen, a fragment of an alien,

spiral-shaped world where a treecreeper, an unknown bird,
digs an unknown insect from under the bark, does not ask what

this is, always in motion, does not ask what you are, you named,
confused creature, you step on the beach, and there a cormorant

sweeps the waves, the sun hits something in its claws, the sun is in its claws,
and genesis is over for the day, the mind awash, abstract thought begins

on the horizon, when I look there I am there,
and the sea is blue, the trees are vertical, the delusions true, and the path ends.

Translated by Kasper Salonen
en_GBEN