Kuin pisarat haparoisivat
hidastuen, kiihtyen
ikkunaa pitkin
kohti tuntematonta,
suudelmat.
*
Männynneulanen
ei tiedä liikkuvansa,
ihminen nauraa.
*
Juovuin vain teestä,
sanoin, katto ropisi,
puhuit niin hiljaa.
*
Kissa säkättää –
kuppi täynnä raksuja –
vahtii pajulintua.
Ihminenkin odottaa
jotain. Pyrähdys. Tyhjää.
I remember this song quite well from its time of release, considering I was still a child. The lyrics are an adaptation of Lorca’s Little Viennese Waltz, and most of the imagery comes from there. Cohen makes the poem his own by adapting it to a rhythm and making it slightly more personal. The setup is the same, but Cohen’s version is making more connections between the images and the poet’s passion for the woman. I find this adaptation more enjoyable than Cohen’s other songs or poems, but it’s also better than the original poem, something that’s very difficult to pull off.
Lorca’s poems often feature the simultaneous presence of love and death, creating drama out of impermanence and unpredictability. We must dance now while it’s possible, for darkness is looming behind us, it’s all around us, the night is approaching. Just keep on dancing amid the garlands, through the crowd of onlookers, passers by.
The music is smooth as if there’s no care in the world, creating a bubble in which it’s safe to dance, even when the images imply the presence of poverty, infidelity, and death. In the end the waltz is everything. Does it mean that the dance is all that matters or that nothing else remains? The thought can be either romantic or terrifying. There’s love that is surrendering, love that is continuous support that lasts when everything falls, and there’s love that consumes everything it touches, taking over the world in a destructive way.
Similarly, when we think of the saying “Love conquers all,” it may mean that everything can be overcome and turned good by love, or it could mean that something we call love, an unhealthy obsession, dims the light of everything else around it until it seems there is no way out, nothing worthwhile in the world except this one thing we hold on to as the final hope.
Or maybe it’s a connection between love and movement. Let us keep moving through the night, holding each other even if nothing else is left. It is our hope in the darkness, gentle music of our mouths and fingertips, echoes around us. The contrast between Viennese dance halls and beggars on the roofs, the dancers and children playing in the attic. Let the music play as long as humanity lasts, for what else can we do? We must keep searching for something, that feeling present when holding each other, since in the end nothing remains, there will be only silence. The waltz that drags its feet, its tail, that dies in my arms and lives by this passion, not for the partner alone but existence itself.
Keväällä hän kutsui luokseen juomaan omenaviiniä.
Olin niin nuori, etten tiennyt mitä se merkitsee:
muuttumista omenankukiksi, lentämistä iltataivaalla,
valkeat terälehtemme kuin levottomat kaaliperhoset,
sormemme pilviä hipoen,
murenevat siniset ja vihreät kohti yötä
katseiden peittyessä hämärään,
sanoja jotka väistelevät aamun valkeutta.
Istun vielä hänen kanssaan näinä kesinä,
vaikka emme näe toisiamme,
ja vanhenemisen haikeus on sen tajuamista,
miten ainutlaatuinen oli jaettu hetki
kahtena omenankukkana,
jotka putoavat kostealle nurmelle.
Kesäaikaan kirjoitettu runo. Viime päivinä tuntuu siltä, että runot eivät onnistu, laari on tyhjä. Siksi laitan tähän mieluummin vanhemman tekstin. En enää muista, mitä ajattelin kirjoittaessani, mutta mieleeni tulee todellinen ihminen, jonka kanssa join kerran omenaviiniä nuoruudessani, sekä Pertti Niemisen hienot suomennokset kiinalaisesta runoudesta. Ehkä tämä on yritys tavoittaa jotain samanlaista värinää pohtiessani vanhaa muistoa.
The pilgrim cries out: “…for I have reached a limit of compassion and relief”. I’d like to pay attention to the indefinite article there. It sounds grammatically incorrect because we’re so used to thinking that there must be one definite limit in anything, and there is nothing beyond. Much like the title “A Beastly Comedy” implies that it is only one such thing, and that many other comedies are, in one way or another, beastly, having teeth that bite, being living creatures with their own motivations and desires.
So the pilgrim has reached a limit, but has already learned that what he once thought was his absolute limit wasn’t it at all. There’s a feeling that beyond this point there is no relief, and that he cannot feel compassion for these creatures anymore, but then again he’s been proved wrong before. Deeper pain is possible, but so is deeper compassion. So using the indefinite article means that there’s still a smidgen of hope, some belief that the suffering can end and that the pilgrim is at least a little in control. He acknowledges his current feelings of hopelessness, but admits that it may not be the whole story.
What we perceive to be the limit today is only that, a perception. This goes not only to compassion and relief but other things that are abstract, emotional, relative. And what are such things is also open to debate.
The pilgrim is also starting to question the point of it all, wondering who should be punished, who is innocent and who is guilty if a whole system within our society is corrupt and keeps regenerating itself as people always have difficulty opposing or questioning practices that others take for granted. If everyone is guilty, does it mean everyone should be punished or absolved. Or just a few of them? Who are responsible, and are we to expect that those with the highest authority understand better what they’re doing? Questions of accountability are complex even from a legal perspective, and when it comes to philosophy, things are muddled even further. Certainly there’s often a sense of injustice when those who are supposed to be accountable walk away without any consequences.
I don’t know. I’m inclined to think that people who do evil don’t fully understand the consequences, can’t empathise with the suffering or are just too distanced from the emotional fallout. That doesn’t take away the accountability, but it might be easier to think that people are inherently good, and that evil mostly comes from lack of understanding rather than a deliberate attempt to hurt people.
There are some people who truly lack compassion and who are excited by the thought of others suffering, and if they get into positions of power, the results are ugly. One may ask to what extent they understand the consequences in the way that normal humans do, but I’m more interested in how they get into those positions in the first place, and how ordinary, compassionate people go along with diabolical plans that others have come up with in the name of something good. There is no one obvious answer, but it’s important to ask the questions: who is to be condemned: the leader, the strategist, the engineer, the labourer, the soldier, the writer? Where do we draw the line if we do not want to lose our own humanity?
Ensilumi kohoaisi taivaaseen,
maa muuttuisi puhtaanruskeaksi,
paljastaisi meidät makaamassa,
yksittäiset hiutaleet kiteytyisivät kielellä,
leijuisivat mutkitellen ylös, ilon sakarat,
katsoisimme toisiimme,
vielä kerran ajattelisimme
tämän olevan ikuista.
*
Häntä moititaan hämäräksi,
mutta katso noita salaperäisiä lintuja,
joiden siipien muotoa ei voi tunnistaa,
tuota viimeistä valolätäkköä liukumassa,
valumassa seinällä kohti sokkelia,
tuota henkäystä, joka valkeana pöllähtää,
rakastettusi elämä,
joka sivuaa kasvojasi
ajovalokukkien loisteessa.
Ihminen: kevääksi kotiin,
kukkaköynnökseksi kirjahyllyä kiemurtelemaan
teoksesta toiseen tuoksuvaksi,
tuoksuvaksi hiuksille seppeleeksi
ja pihan valoraidoiksi, niin
huumaava valo, että sadepäivinäkin
se tanssittaa, kuin olisi rytmiä
tuo ruohonkorsi, tämä puro,
sulamisvedet, älä välitä kyyneleistä,
ne ovat onnellisuutta.
*
Nyt he eivät ole yksin,
taipuvat luuttomat vartalot,
kahdet aivot kotilossa,
jossa kaikki tärkeä tapahtuu.
Kukaan ei näe sisään,
valo ei pakene, musta aukko,
kauniita kierteitä ulkopuolella, sanotaan,
materiaa, piste- ja viivakuvioita,
heidän on oltava onnellisia. Ehkä niin.
Jälkeen jää limavana.
Commitment, dedication, promises. The song was originally written by the Cuban composer Gonzalo Roig in 1911, with lyrics written by him and his wife Blanca Becerra. Especially the Spanish version has become a standard, but even then it took about 20 years. I’ve always loved this version by Vera Lynn recorded, like most of her hits, during WW2.
Previously I wrote about the Momus song Rhetoric which has similar statements, trying to say “I will be eternally yours”, but phrasing it in such a way as if there was a condition in which love might end. Additionally there’s the idea that two people might be born to be with each other, a belief in destiny.
It is not important whether such a thing as destiny is real, or even could be. The emotion alone matters, and how love is such a strong impulse that it changes our thoughts, beliefs, our very being. It makes past disappointments insignificant, the present becomes fuzzy, permanent intoxication upon just seeing the beloved, and the future is suddenly certain, as if the universe itself had decided that this love must happen. Sure, one may think about it scientifically as a cocktail of hormones and the body trying to find a suitable mate, but what I’m interested in is the stuff of poems and paintings: the human experience, as unrealistic as it might be, as fanciful and inventive.
It is in the glory of the stars, in the birdsong, in the nights full of music, and when there is no music around, the notes still keep ringing. We hear them breathing together, sitting opposite each other drinking tea, or holding each other until the morning.
I have a fond memory of singing this song on a warm night while walking through some industrial park somewhere in New Zealand. “Here or on far distant shores”. I was not in a relationship at the time, but just thinking of love that transcends time and space is comforting, and how the thoughts may be with the beloved no matter what the distance is. There is time to be present, to focus completely on what is at hand. But can poets ever really do that, just to describe what is in front of us? Well, in a way. An important part of writing is observing things closely, being really present. But then to turn it into actual poetry or stories one has to sit down and remember, twist it through some viewpoint to make it interesting. In that way writing is also about displacement, thinking about things that are not here, things that have never been. Yet what a wonder it is, to be in love and to be relieved of the self-imposed duty to think of metaphors, and instead to reflect on the world with another soul, not just reflect images of beauty I happen to find in nature or in the city.
Metsänreuna on koti,
syysaurinko pisaran päällä
lämmön muisto, aavistus.
Tiedän vanhenevani,
kun kohtaan heleäihoisia,
jotka eivät tiedä,
että se riittää, kirkas valo
silmät kiinni.
*
Hapuilevaa huutoa ei yleensä kuule,
vain sängyn narahdus,
makaavan tietoisuus
yksin,
katossa kuvioita,
peiton puristus kehon lähelle,
vaikka joku olisi vieressä,
valosiivut sisään ikkunasta
eläväiset kuin muistuttaakseen
lämmöstä toisaalla,
valot, ajatukset, kissojen tiu’ut,
narahdus,
!
*
Mittaamme suolan makeutta
ja kivun riekaleita, pyörittelemme
käsissämme surun muotoja,
kunnes katsomme kaarnaa,
pudotamme kankaanpalat neulasille,
kaikki maatuu, ja vaikka tuntuu
että havaitseminen on muistamista,
ei: tämä terävä sisäänhengitys,
silmiin katsominen ajan valloitusta,
muisto ei ole menneisyyden selkeyttä
vaan nykyisyyden usvaa;
kirkkaus, valo peittää
kaiken paljastamansa,
lämmin.
*
Ajattelen: ajatus ei paina mitään,
yhä odotus olkapäillä on kivireppu,
kauniita, ehkä arvottomia,
tuijotan kvartsijuonia koko illan,
painan kasvoni lähelle –
miltä sinä tuoksut –
ja etsimme tahoillamme lisää kiviä tähtien joukosta,
tähtiä kivien, elämä syöksyy hitaasti
sammaleisena suoniimme, tämä halu
tarttua kallioon, kipristää juuria,
kannamme sitä koko ikämme,
ajattomuutta, annamme sille nimiä,
maasälpärakkaus, marmorikuolema,
kipinät kivien välillä, hiekkakivihimo,
rukous – älä murene – pakkaseroosio,
alabasteriarmo, älä odota
ikuisuutta, joka olisi muuta kuin hetki,
liukuva käsi, kuinka sileät
ovatkaan nämä pinnat, hioutunut gneissi,
sormet ja sormet, tässä olemme, tässä.