In Sorrow – Sureva – In-Between Two Worlds

Miessaarenselkä, Gulf of Finland

Winter becomes white, ghosting over bone-cold grey ground.	Talven valkeus laskeutuu ytimiin asti kylmän, harmaan maan haamukätkyeenä.

The alchemy of a man remains in a footprint cast in ice	Jäähän valettuna jalanjälki miehen olomuodon muutoksesta jäljelle jääneenä,

dissolving silently into the sorrowing mystery of the embryonal blood,	sulautuen vaitonaisesti alkioveren murehduttavaan arvoitukseen.

Its vaulted memory so darkened to become a healing wound in the birth of a newborn child’s first breath,	Lukittuna synkkien muistojen holvissa, muuntuakseen parantavaksi haavaksi vastasyntyneen ensihenkäyksen koitossa.

its transcendent heartbeat felt tenderly in a woman’s tears gently dropped upon the ritual	Lapsen kaikenvoittavan sydämenlyönnin tuntuessa armeliaasti naisen kyynelissä lempeästi tipahtavissa

of a coffin left stained, to be shoveled over by the pitiful grief of earth.	jättäen hautajaisriitin arkun tahrituksi sen peittyessä maan kurjaan suruun.

Ted McNamara

(Finnish translation by Nina Rautonen)

(The essence of the poem is drawn from the sorrow of war, particularly in this instance from what became known as the Winter War fought between the invading, mostly conscripted, Russian armies and a Finnish nation determined to remain independent. It was a bitterly cold winter with temperatures on the Karelian Isthmus reaching a low of – 43 C. The ghosted remains of slain bodies were often left imprinted in ice while the bodies themselves were drawn down into the deep of lakes and forest marshes in many cases never to be found.)