Some poems by Jaan Malin

Jaan Malin is an Estonian surrealist poet (born in 1960). He graduated the faculty of Estonian Philology in the Tartu University. And published poetry, plays and a sound poetry CD. He is a member of the Society of Estonian Students, Society of Estonian Authors, Estonian Society of Literature, Union of Estonian Writers and Assembly of Young Authors in Tartu. His work is translated in English, Dutch, Lithuanian, Slovenian, Russian, Finnish, Swedish, Romanian. For more information about Jaan, click here.




I HAVE LIVED

Oh, toilsome luck that for long time
has greater been than all my human might.
That wondrous moment not wanted by the kind
who aim at quiet path and peace of soul

– I fear You so, oh life of strain
(whilst desiring You sincerely)
that I can feel Your budding beauty
to smother all my ecstasy of toil.

x x x

Reaching towards you and calling you my love.
How could I be without you?
Perhaps, just because it never was for real,
it was you stood so lively in my thoughts –
No moment can be more alive.
Yes, never did I leave you for a moment
although we never were as one.

x x x

I rest my eyes on sunburnt skin,
the wondrous down of leg.
The neck, so proud and upright
tossing hair all wet from swimming,
light blonde, bleached by sun
and falling on your back
when as if dancing you walk on sand
whilst knowing that my eyes are watching you.


THE AURA
I washed your frozen feet
hearing the soft crooning of your toes,
the sound that evenly spread over both my rooms.
I bent above the basin while
You talked about the weeping willows by the river,

so fresh and supple and so innocent –
like Yourself, I thought
and felt at once embarrassed:
onne must not think that way of You.
I rose and went.
A slight sheet of ice on autumn pools.


NEIGHBOUR WOMAN

This song is of you for you are fleeing
hearing strange rustling sounds
above you head – a crane so slowly stepping,
never treading on a bug orhalf-ripe berry.
The crane will spread its wings above you
at the very moment you give birth.


COURAGE

Courage to question nothing.
Courage to know nothing.
Courage to have faith in yourself.
Courage to differ.

Courage to think about livelihood.
Courage to speak your mind.
Courage to glorify Sunday.
Courage to irritate.

Courage to be intolerant.
Courage to tolerate.
Courage to be tender and fond.
Courage to show it.

Courage to think thoughts not mine.
Courage to make career.
Courage to seem quite stupid.
Courage only to seem.


LOYAL AND CONISTENT
You never contradict yourself
for you have always believed
in some straightforward sanctity.
Within everlasting life.
Never will be lost the time
that was trying to deny existence.
Perhaps they’ll recede somewhat in force.
Now you are panting half-suffocated,
suffocating in nearly clean
heartbreaking space.
You dread shadows and seek some essence
its memory calling to loyalty
and consistence
In this delicate
brittle world.
You stay near nocturnal stuffiness
like a castle of hope
in the cool hall of this castle
a defiant cry is heard.
You snatch the tambourine of remembrance
and the shadows become governed
by secretly born
everswelling
desire for
freedom.


AN ADDRESS I

Here is the land of your life.
Here you know where you stand.
Here nobody can be without Faith.

Here your word is sacred.
Here you can aim straight at your point.
Here you grasp how black isn’t black.

Here you fight your sorrow and spleen.
Here you never conform.
Here Faith judges your deeds.


BRIGHTENING
You stood on the opposite bank.
Still and anxious, empty air.
Your lips – cracked by spring-kisses –
moved like speakingly
but I didn’t hear anything.

Pontoon-bridge was opened,
sleepy chipped beam of light.
Cold and deep water stayed between us
and I wondered why wasn’t it painful
to be. Be.

You stood on the other side of water.
My soul streamed and didn’t feel any obstruction.



ROUTINE

The sleety street is peeping at itself
through frozen breath.
It gathers strength to go.
In greyish- and pink-and-black-striped town
all shapes of fur-coats trudge uphill
who up to now have traded flowers.
Before the mushrooms come
a heap of plastic bags and off-flavoured honey will be sold
and birds in spring won’t ask senseless things
and never listen to the naughty talk of boys come visiting.
The snow mashed by the stepping feet hides
knuckly ice.
Even the bosses keep complaining of the lack of surprises.
Love is permanent pain and vain.
Nobody’s face bears the blossoms of May.


UNDERLIFE

They came like on our own invitation.
Is there misunderstanding’s innocence in their look?
So it seems.
Man is able to bear a lot
of pain. So there was grudge enough
(very concealed) but few shouters.
Once everyone loses his patience
and flames begin to dance
satanic rhythms of swing.
Thus wakes our duty to past and coming times: ees:
to stand one’s ground just here
and now –
REMEMBERING.
Nobody must ask the duty’s origin.
Because it just is inside, or never gets there.


ON THE VICTOR’S SIDE
You were in the centre of Alexanderplatz
and above the Reichstag soared a crevice.
Life, scrambled many years, now being left alone
behind its back all flags were burned.

You felt the limits of your reason
and found nothing to replace it.
But faith was there, if only in a year.
And the past was covered with a film of ice.

You standing there, the war was over.
But really how? Mind was still astir.
When cruel and sexless silence fell
you sensed that pain is Power

that laughs you into oblivion
precisely here, on this greyish square
and now, when emptiness has wrought your soul.
I wonder if you will ever find yourself.


TO MY FATHER
The spring sings anyway.
Birds still arrive as always.
And flowers bloom.
Behind the clouds like here.
Or even more.
Sometime you speaks of it
when slanting rays of sun
fall on the seashore where we walk.
Glide softly over intersecting mirrors.
With brightly shining eyes we talk
about the clarity and purity of glass
about the stolid warmth of wood.

And suddenly you want to see the pond.
And honeycomb near it,
and bees.
You still recall the stuffy wall in summer
in town, on cobble street so hot in sun
or sandy path through poplars to where we sit in sun.
We walk forever.
Even in the kindergarten dreams and the paper of the loved one.
We still walk. And you keep talking.
Perhaps of how you always wanted to have a longer neck.
Or of the unaccountable attraction between you and jews. Or of the brown buds of the ferns.
Or of your childhood.
You used to blend you talk with works of yours just under hand.
Sometimes I felt I boubted this connection.
But now I understand that work was in Your nature.
Perhaps destuctively.

Maybe sometime
we even will not walk on seashore,
but on this street with happiness in air
where you in childhood took a record slide.
We are together anyway
and feel about the same.