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JUHANI AHVENJÄRVI CLAES ANDERSSON EVA-STINA BYGGMÄSTAR TOMAS MIKAEL BÄCK AGNETA ENCKELL MARTIN ENCKELL TUA FORSSTRÖM PENTTI HOLAPPA JOUNI INKALA RIINA KATAJAVUORI JYRKI KIISKINEN TOMI KONTIO JUKKA KOSKELAINEN LEEVI LEHTO HEIDI LIEHU RAKEL LIEHU LAURI OTONKOSKI MARKKU PAASONEN ANNUKKA PEURA MIRKKA REKOLA HENRIKA RINGBOM PENTTI SAARITSA HELENA SINERVO EIRA STENBERG ANNI SUMARI ILPO TIIHONEN SIRKKA TURKKA MERJA VIROLAINEN KJELL WESTÖ (ANDERS HED) |
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MERJA VIROLAINEN (b. 1962) has published four collections of poems, Hellyyttäsi taitat gardenian (Because of Your Tenderness You Break a Gardenia, 1990), Tervapeili (Tar Mirror, 1995), Pilvet peittävät sisäänsä pilvet (Clouds Encompass Clouds, 2000) and Olen tyttö, ihanaa! (I'm a Girl, Wonderful!, 2004). She has also written a book about shamanism and witchcraft and a play called Täyttymyskomedia (Fulfilment Comedy, 1993). Virolainen has also worked as translator, translating Keats, Shelley, Dickinson and Indian modern poetry among others.
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THE ROUGH FRICTION OF OPPOSITES |
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This parting of ours, how many have there been? Every time it is equally unusual, the smokeblue of heart alone moves blood. These verses are not lyricism but brutality. One step from suicide to exchange one's life with verse, a dubious exchange: I play myself. How long this time? The scent of winter in a rose is lovely; I cannot write without our separations. I don't long for you, but without longing I lose my voice.
That is how in an embrace death and loneliness gave birth to truth, but even that fell off a shoulder so that I would get what exists. I don't long for your small lights, you carry them like shields.
How many times did you separate from me? The Wolf-bride doesn't miss a singer on her body pierced like a sieve, light looks through the cavity that is my heart, Northern Star from behind drooling clouds. This parting of ours, what number is it? I don't know the melody of the useless song in which I get everything the way I get myself.
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 Still
Bottles clink, glasses break
What´s the use of prolonging,...
You put out my heart, like a cig...
Bear Park
That pimply-faced Narcissus
Friend, against my will
This parting of ours, how many...
Quietly sighing like sand
I close my eyes and open again
Oh back, shimmery parchment
This time next year
No, he didn't grow yet
Afterwards everyone leaves
Say, my sagacity, goodbye
I am the last poem
There are no neon lights in Hels...
1.
By speaking from close by
Nothing has been
When a curlew cries
Mother's scent is powder
Grandma, your tissue-paper face...
Autumnal night pauses as I pause
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