Electric Verses

Etusivu : Welcome to Electric Verses! : Rakel Liehu

Rakel Liehu

Rakel Liehu

Rakel Liehu (b. 1939) has written eleven collections of poetry and two novels. In the nineteen seventies, Rakel Liehu was regarded as a rare neoromanticist who developed religious poetry in a more philosophical direction. Her collection, Kubisseja (Cubisms, 1992) was the beginning of something new: it is a violent cubistic burst towards a new expression and joy of language. The next three collections, murehtimatta ! smaragdinen (grieve not ! emerald, 1993), Readymade (1995) and Skorpionin sydän (The Scorpio’s Heart) took this line even deeper.


DISPERSED ENTIRETY

Brains, tenderly scooped out into the light

body,
immersed in a mountain of salt,
swaddled

now guarded by
a clay figure, spear in hand, Time?
(its rotting strength loved only by the fruit,
the tasty pyramid of its secret seeds)

body soul! game of hide and seek, waiting
(noble pile of bones)

Nefertiti’s nocturnal gaze
unblinking
open

From Skorpionin sydän (The Scorpion’s Heart), 1997. Translated from the Finnish by Anselm Hollo.

  • Brains, tenderly scooped
  • My Child My Almond Eye
  • In a room with a number
  • Earth’s hot womb brought to a boil
  • but when the smallest crown prin…
  • Runway’s shoulders?
  • Deep
  • If everything is born out of rej…
  • We were born
  • Wind strikes fire from grass
  • But I
  • We didn’t desire to come here
  • Obediently