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