Maarja Kangro

So, as a child, you say?
You jumped,
and the pile of Eternit cracked?
Blue sneakers, white chrysotile.
I saw the enlargement
of a 10 micrometre fiber
entering the respiratory system.
A piece of Eternit
was meant to be smoked fish?
You nibbled at it
like original sin?
Like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:
actually, you don’t feel anything,
don’t understand much,
10μm, a construction worker in filthy trousers,
an agony of an ignorant mind,
20 or 40 years, pleural plaques, mesothelioma,
scar tissue in the lungs.

Yes, every year, it seems, the lilac blooms,
and sometimes a big passion.
The fiber descends very slowly
and invisibly like the future.
Oh, don’t be mad now!
Look, this is my new favourite wine.
I’ll buy. Let’s have a glass tonight.

Translated by the author and Brandon Lussier

In Pláka, around the Acropolis,

not to mention elsewhere,

multitudes stroll and sleep.

Big dogs. Gentle, polite.

With the enthusiasm of puppies         

we translate the deepest language,

I take pictures of the dogs:

yellow, white, grey, black.

„There is not a single small one.“

You glow like a scientist:

„All the small ones died!“

Your blue eyes are bright with excitement.

The almond was once poisonous,

all peas tiny as grains of salt,

and man a bloodthirsty midget!

Or what?

We are bigger than our ancestors,

the two of us love courtesy.

„There is some kind of melancholy

in these surviving dogs.“

„The nice ones ate the others?“

We sit and eat our dinner

in memory of the cynics – the right ones –

and to the health of polite dogs.

Translated by the author and Brandon Lussier

In a small bookstore

under the roof of a shopping mall,

looking for a gift,

I resorted to the silly habit

of tearing off the cuticles

around my fingernails with my teeth.

When I took down an anthology

of Hungarian poetry from the shelf

my right thumb started bleeding.

I didn’t expect such a heavy flow:

over the photo of Sandor Weöres

a rich red mark was left.

Startled, I put the book back

and quickly took down another. A Hawk’s Winter Cry

by Mikhail Lotman. On a volume by Joseph Brodsky

I left a grateful plump stain. 

I had some books at home:

Bourdieu, Geertz, Huizinga.

But I wanted to leave a souvenir on each of them.

Black, white and red. Red, white and black.

Like the flags of some Asian countries.

Then I thought, why not mark the romances,

crime stories, fantasy fiction, too? I had

plenty of blood to give and didn’t feel stingy.

All those intense faces with blood on them.

At one point the saleswoman seemed to mumble.

I remembered I still had to buy a gift,

and I left without asking for any recompense for my blood.

This is the bit of blood I’ve shed for culture. 

Perhaps I would have shed more, though, if I had been asked.

Translated by Richard Berengarten and the author

In the hot garden of the Peggy
Guggenheim Museum in Venice
stands a sculpture by Anish Kapoor,
a dark grey granite block.

The grey granite
contains two concave circles,
so smooth and shiny
that they look black.

A tanned man in a light shirt,
perhaps a compatriot of Kapoor,
asks whether this is a mirror.
“Magic. A master’s hand, I say!”

The man watches himself in the circle:
from a distance, the face appears large,
silly, and close up it’s small.
The man laughs and pokes the work again.

„Look! Just look.“ He shakes his head,
laughs and stoops over
the big black circles.
Then he’s serious again.

„It makes me sick.
Makes me dizzy.
It makes me throw up, booaah!“
And then he leaves.

Translated by the author and Brandon Lussier

‘again’ is a big word.

slowly and quickly

again

again men rejoice on the radio

that they are on the right road

and talk of the cyclical nature of time

a proper road goes in circles, even I

recognize young skin on the beach and

“et si tu n’existais pas,” sing the loudspeakers

men on the radio speak of the connection

of everything to everything else:  ringingly

one says, "the butterfly effect" – I lift my wings

cyclical time gives you a good sleep

for after such a sleep you think you’re revived

and again

I flutter my wing

the good men on the radio start coughing

I flap my wings more amply and a wind comes up

the men cough wheezing, the airwaves revolt

ships sink and swimmers drown, the final sleep

comes stormy and grey

let’s think of a word that never was before

it was just now

and now it isn’t anymore

Translated by Ilmar Lehtpere

I heard it on the radio:

in ancient times, the pig strolled freely

around the house,

eating man's shit.

It grew fat, had a litter.

The man then killed the pig and ate it.

After dinner, he went to a bush

somewhere behind the house.

The pig´s offspring knew the smell,

went to the bush to eat.

And so on.

Then it turned out that history was a spiral.

Returning to the roots,

the pig took along

many finer tools

and more articulate attitudes.

Translated by the author and Mike Horwood

On the manor house clad in scaffolding,

a flag is waving like a rag.

A national flag. Torn and shabby,

it doesn't care which nation it belongs to.

The fabric, worn by wind and rain,

the threads, sickly. It doesn't want

its tired molecules to represent anyone.

I stand under it on the asphalt

and say: "Come into my cave!

Come away, into my cave, matter!"

The Nike running shoes on a happy daughter: slave work

has given birth to pink, despised polyurethane.

Paper in the cupboards of anxious academics and clerks:

their life's beautiful, pale and silent victim.

The warm shiny metal of the jeep that killed a pedestrian.

The watercolour-like photo of the weak member of parliament.

The flag is waving. Come, fabric, colour, and texture!

Come, graphic form of the letter!

Come, let's hug each other and sleep!

Come hide yourself in my cave, matter!

Translated by Maarja Kangro and Mike Horwood

When a hairy white leg shows
from under his black trousers,
I have to look.
I look at the belly under his jacket:
it hasn’t been growing much.
I watch his hands: of those on stage,
his are the most delicate.
I shouldn’t look
at his eyes for long, but it’s already too late.
When he starts to speak,
I tense up,
when his sentence breaks, I’ll sqeak
with the chair. I’m like a parent
at a school concert.

Now they offer grapes and cookies.
I’ll go to the other hall
only for drinks, of course.
Oh, isn’t that - ! Oh, hello.
I observe his eyes, his neck,
his groin: warm, about a metre away.
I wonder whether the ex-colonists
observe in the same way.
This ground once belonged to us.
How should we touch it now?
How are you doing now –
not too good, right?
You’ve got hunger and epidemies,
guerillas and dictators
that we will have to contain.
We know of sheds and cars on fire,
starving kids with swollen stomachs.

His teeth don’t rot,
his cheeks don’t sink,
his eyes aren’t red.
Judging by his breath,
he hasn’t taken to drinking.
The ex-colonist studies meticulously.
Where are my traces,
the Other’s trauma, my historical justification?

Now we’re eating grapes
and drinking brandy,
yes, we’re eating grapes
and drinking brandy.

Translated by the author