Tracks from My Album

Anni Sumari 

Tracks from my Album 

Translated by David McDuff and Sarka Hantula

Anni Sumari was born in Helsinki, Finland, in 1965, and studied literature and media/communication studies at the University of Helsinki. She is the author of fourteen books of poetry and prose, including Selected Poems (2006), The Years Above the Waters (2003), Train Play (2001), Sinerian (2000), and Measure and Quantity (1998), for which she won the Finnish National Broadcasting Company's Dancing Bear Prize for best poetry book of the year. She also received an artist's grant from the Finnish Ministry of Culture for 2004-2006. She is active in translation and editing, and her works have been translated into 24 languages including English, German, French, Swedish, Danish, Belorussian, Serbian, Macedonian and Italian,  Slovene and Hebrew. She was shortlisted for the Runeberg Prize, and in 2016 was elected Best International Poet of the Year by World Poets Quarterly Magazine (Multilingual) and the editorial department of Chinese Poetry Abroad). She was the first Finn to receive this meritorious award. She is a member of the Board of the Finnish PEN Center. She recently received an artist's grant from the Finnish Ministry of Culture for 2007-2011, and has edited and translated a book called Odin's Steed: The Scandinavian Myths, which has just come out in Finnish. She is the co-editor of The Other Side of Landscape, published by Slope. 

Anni Sumari's poems have been translated into English by David McDuff.

The sky, Swiss air space, December

  

We slide on the tray of noon,

we ski, we slalom on the expanse of the clouds.

On the plane’s wing it says: Do not step

outside this area,

I would never dream of it, I promise you,

anyway it’s cold out there, -65°C.

The snot runs, what joy

to be able to pick an anthrax sample

from one’s nose, I long for you! even

in the deep frost I can’t

concentrate on what is,

be where I am.

We are 

unquestionably at an altitude

of at least 11,880 metres.

That cloud is tall

for its age, the hairs on its crown

touch the angels of heaven. So

at night it’s the starry sky,

one must be thankful for that,

if on top of everything else one wasn’t

thankful, what would happen then?

Europe lies under an eiderdown

weary of those things that come

from the sky, from the blue, the bolts

the ribs of the clouds slamming down

into the divine comedy. 

Be quiet, be quiet, encyclopaedia.

The concepts burn your ears

as you don’t know what is behind them,

gratitude, freedom, love. Innocence

is a white house and an empty bottle,

are you wiser now. From above the rural landscape

is a threadbare suede coat

a moth-eaten stuffed reindeer, what else is

missing from this picture. The shadows of

the trails of jet planes ticking

over it. 

The earth’s face has always been hidden by plants

and encrusted with bivalves. Is it any wonder

that some of them were preserved, perpetuated

in stone or resin, marble, softness.

But is it possible

that even one portion of spaghetti Bolognese

will be preserved in any circumstances?

The mountains grow bearskin,

then turn to cinders,

the romantic beaches grow fossilized,

the messages vanish from the answering machine,

but the most haphazard one of the most tender things

preserves its form, remains, moves minds,

is put on display, receives its value by chance,

a nucleus of meaning. 

The granite flickers.

A human being wants to know

his exact location, approximately

by rule of thumb

the bedrock, and how long

a finger can be held in the candle flame

before it burns –

and if there is stone underneath

is there also stone on top? and what

meteor would fall

on my head, if I lived long enough? and

have I already lived beyond the moment when

I ought to have died?

and will I push my head

through the grey granite

even in the graveyard. 

But here is a surface 

which will not be breached: the horizon.

You can freely choose

an arbitrary point

anywhere on the globe,

and you will notice that all

gazes finally turn there.

Before that, however, they perform

an inconceivably complex

figure-dance at the fourth dimension

of the system of coordinates. 

Through the oval window

I watch us reach our goal.

I am not touched at all.

In the sunlight, seen from above,

the cities are broken mirrors

in which your memories

are distorted in reflection.

You clench your fist

you caress the emptiness.

The dead would do well

to weep for the living

and not the other way round

 translated from Finnish by David McDuff 

night night

by Anni Sumari

night night what do you know of the night

the quays are its fingernails

under which black ice

cracks and breaks

night night what do you know of the night the quays are its fingernails under which black ice cracks and breaks

you know nothing of the night’s bright face

because it turns its black coat shrouded back on you

at regular intervals, at regular intervals

now and then it casts its honest gaze at you over its shoulder

and when you say that it’s the moon then it’s the moon

black panther whose long-haired velvet

you can feel in your fingers at a distance of 380,000 kilometres

black long-haired panther whose sweat makes the stars sparkle

whose fur suffocates you, who winds itself around your neck

black panther winds itself around the white swan

night makes the pyramids wail with frustration

night makes the skyscrapers wail with their first love

the night spreads out like a uniting statue made of black canvas 

connecting the Statue of Liberty and the Great Wall of China

the night crawls in the tunnels of your guts coughing ash

the night bruises your temples from within with its knees

the nocturne of the spheres whispers in your ears

your stomach is the night’s bagpipes

your slow breastbone is the night’s movement

in your bloodstream the stars flow

in a nocturnal seizure night and heart will meet in secret and you will die

like Juliet, like Romeo unable to spell one sonnet in the Book of the Dead

as you feared ever since it was written and illustrated for you

with the pictures and names of the creatures and constellations

the pictures and names of the night

at night the stars burn

more holes in the black velvet coverlet

you know it, the quays are your fingernails

the morning full of scars – the Kama Sutra

teaches how to make them

you really know nothing of the night’s bright face because it carries you

into the sheath inside out, at regular intervals, regular intervals

and your eyes remain inside and you see your own darkness

a night substitute

instead of the night,

and where is the bungler who first had the idea

of calling it evil

yö yö mitä tiedätte yöstä

laiturit ovat sen kynsiä

joiden alla musta jää

ritisee ja murtuu

yö yö mitä tiedätte yöstä laiturit ovat sen kynsiä joiden alla musta jää ritisee ja murtuu

ette tiedä mitään yön valoisista kasvoista

koska se kääntää teille mustaan takkiin verhotun selkänsä

säännöllisin väliajoin, säännöllisin väliajoin

toisinaan sentään luo teihin vilpittömän katseen olkansa yli

ja silloin sanotte että se on kuu silloin se on kuu

musta panttteri jonka pitkäkarvaisen sametin

voi tuntea sormissaan 380 000 kilometrin etäisyyden halki

musta pitkäkarvainen pantteri jonka hiki helmeilee tähtiä

jonka karvaan tukehdutte, joka kietoutuu kaulanne ympäri

musta pantteri kietoutuu valkoisen joutsenen ympäri

yö saa pyramidit ulvomaan turhautuneina

yö saa pilvenpiirtäjät ulvomaan ensirakkauttaan

yö levittyy mustasta pressusta tehtynä

yhdistävänä patsaana Vapaudenpatsaan, Kiinan muurin yli

yö konttaa sisälmyksiesi tunneleissa yskien tuhkaa

yö kolhii polvilla ohimoitasi sisältäpäin

sfäärien yösoitto suhisee korvissasi

vatsasi on yön säkkipilli

hidas rintalastasi on yön liike

verenkierrossasi virtaavat tähdet

yöllisessä sydänkohtauksessa kohtaavat yö ja sydän ja sinä kuolet

kuin Julia, kuin Romeo pystymättä tavaamaan sonettiakaan Kuolleiden kirjasta

kuten olet pelännyt siitä asti kun se kirjoitettiin ja kuvitettiin sinulle

eläinten ja tähtikuvioiden kuvin ja nimin

yön kuvat ja nimet

yöllä tähdet polttelevat

lisää reikiä mustaan samettipeittoon

sen tiedätte, laiturit ovat kynsiänne

aamu arpia täynnä – niiden

tekemisen Kamasutrakin opettaa

sittenkään ette tiedä mitään yön valoisista kasvoista koska se kääntää teidät

nurin, tuppeen, säänöllisin väliajoin, säännöllisin väliajoin

ja silmänne jäävät sisäpuolelle ja näette oman pimeytenne

yön sijasta yön

korvikkeen, 

kuka poropeukalo keksi

nimittää sitä pahuudeksi  

translated from Finnish by David McDuff (with thanks to FILI)

An African Hand

by Anni Sumari

An African hand
has carefully shaped this wooden sculpture
almost 70 cm long, with two heads
and one body
two identical girl's heads, the eyes
closed now because,
because they can't see with them any more,
death has abducted the two-headed
goddess in its black armpit
goddess who never learned
to walk
but could speak, with her two mouths
words that were listened to closely
and also repeated to the next generation
the two heads spoke in turn
and one stopped to listen
when the other spoke, their conversations
would have been all the more interesting
and weighty and important
as soon as they realised they were
a goddess we would call
Siamese
Siamese twins although Siam
is in Siam and far away
they predicted
the past and the future
like the dreams of aborigines
but they had been born
in the deep armpit of Africa
unable to continue their lives
as gods
as gods
born for death
unsuited for life
even though they were so well equipped
far better than ordinary people
with two boat-shaped mouths
four boat-shaped eyes,
two noses, baobabs growing upside down,
two sets of eyebrows like two horizons
in the east and in the west
two rose-coloured brains
like the sea's surface touched by sun
going up and down
two coconut skulls
four labyrinthine ears
two clavicles connecting
rivers of two throats
two shoulders
two hands
that wouldn’t
greet one another
one heart
one belly
one womb
two feet

that wouldn't 

tread on the other's toes


Afrikkalainen käsi
on tarkasti muotoillut tämän puuveistoksen,
melkein 70 cm pitkän, kaksipäisen
yksiruumiisen
kaksi identtistä tytönpäätä, silmät
jo suljettuina sillä,
sillä he eivät enää näe niillä
kuolema on kaapannut kaksipäisen
jumalattaren mustaan kainaloonsa
jumalattaren joka ei koskaan oppinut 
kävelemään
mutta osasi puhua, kahdella suullaan
joitain sanoja joita kuunneltiin tarkasti
ja toistettiin jälkipolvillekin
kaksi päätä puhui vuorotellen
ja toinen vaikeni kuuntelemaan
kun toinen puhui, heidän keskustelunsa
olisivat käyneet yhä kiinnostavammiksi 
ja merkittävämmiksi ja vakavammiksi
kun he olisivat 
ymmärtäneet olevansa jumalatar,
jota me nimittäisimme
siiamilaiseksi
siiamilaisiksi kaksosiksi vaikka siam
on siamissa ja kaukana
he ennustivat
mennyttä ja tulevaa
kuin aboriginaalien unet 
mutta he olivat syntyneet 
Afrikan syvässä kainalossa 
pystymättä jatkamaan elämää
niin kuin jumalat 
niin kuin jumalat
syntyneinä kuolemaan
kykenemättöminä elämään
vaikka olivat niin hyvin varustettuja
paljon paremmin kuin tavalliset ihmiset
kaksi suuta, veneenmuotoista
 neljä silmää, veneenmuotoista
kahden nenän ylösalaisin kasvavat baobabit
kahdet kulmakarvat kuin kaksi horisonttia
idässä ja lännessä
kahdet ruusuiset aivot
kuin aurinko koskettaessaan meren pintaa 
ylös tullessaan ja alas mennessään
kaksi kookospähkinäkalloa
neljä labyrinttikorvaa 
kahden kurkun virrat
yhtyvät solisluut 
kaksi olkapäätä
kaksi kättä 
jotka eivät
tervehtisi toisiaan
yksi sydän
yksi vatsa
yksi kohtu 
kaksi jalkaa
jotka eivät
astuisi toinen toisensa varpaille

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Poem

by Anni Sumari

Trash, straw, spring ice.
The fields creak on their hinges
and fold open like a cargo hatch, for a moment
I can see straight into hell. There is nothing
down there. Just as I thought. Except bodies,
clean and smooth as porcelain, their surfaces tattooed all over
with those little blue flowers that people are encouraged
to paint on porcelain painting courses. Lies told to others
always have a reason, but the lies told to myself
make me ashamed. Nothing at all. In the nearby village
the roofs get goose-bumps from the rain’s touch and giant flowers
multiply. Chimneys wander to and fro
in their narrow spaces. The people sit in their wet coats
without moving, as if that way they get
less wet than the park benches and the chairs.
If now
you raise the hatch, lie down on the earth
and let the field slam shut on you,
you will never be able to come back. Trash. The remains
of last fall. Tales told to children.

Three jesting Fates, green-scaled,
bulge out from the roof shingles of the old church,
laughing, playing. There is no question of mercy
for a long time now. On the onion dome opposite
three golden archers blossom silently,
humourless, as if cast in metal. Ready
to stand with arrows in their bows for the rest of their lives.

A massacre? Once more, again, even later than
afterwards, how come it has never happened to me?
but I expect it happens to, among others, many
who are deeply guilty, unhappy, latent
self- or serial killers. All of this is rational
and identical with a certain paradigm, it fits
the ideal of Heavenly control. We have been told:
suffer the consequences of your actions, accept
the curse intended for you. No massacre. To the jungle
law will come only from illusions, strange interpretations
and the visions of seekers of transcendence.
Masses of nightingales, in distant souls
nightingales in their hundreds sing, in golden, green
ciphers. The dimensions are such that
the dimensions imagined by one are senseless
compared to the dimensions imagined by another.
Nothing. In that state of pain where one cannot pray
any more, one can still count, not forward, but backwards,
10, 9 , 8, 7... 0, and repeat it, 10, 9, 8, 7 and so on.

The end of the great rainbow is in a large
field. ”There came two blue angels, slender
as the spines of books” –– this too is someone’s vision. The howling
of the feet, in the tender crop. The dead fish of the torso.
At the top of the head the world’s end. You gods
remember it, and can tell us, all we have left
is a rumour, a faded image of the past.
I lie down on the earth and let
the field slam shut on me. I hear
a bird’s faint cry, but it
is outside. Outside as always,
now it comes inside. I have never
really been observant, but I do have ears,
oh yes, even now as I tell myself the truth
about what was what. Those quiet little sisters
who have God spread like poison
in their eyelids. The pearls of the necklace crumble
with a quiet crunch, like breaking radial bones. In the greenhouse
palaces of dreams silently nodding
on the water... In the bed another cockroach is
flattened. People anxiously tear bunches of
entrance tickets, trying to find an exit
from the present situation... The result of
time’s indecency, the weather, the individual crushed
by hurt feelings is charming -- like a modern fresco –
who made it, I wonder? Death painted without hands.
I lie indignantly under the ground, listening to
the springtime rumble of the dump-trucks.

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Cotonou

by Anni Sumari


Je suis le négro,
Je suis les réglos,
un jour un rigolo,
un jour un p’tit gigolo...


I.

Can’t get rid of you.
Even in Africa you accompanied me
like some mascot.
You don’t take up much room (but all of it) –
Flying over Berlin hurt a little
because that is where you really live -
and then you were with me again
in unreality.

Your charm turned against me.
I can’t hate you even if I try.
A dark and massive silence landed with me
at Lagos airport, where there was a power cut.
Planes waiting like salmon in a stream,
their bellies full of passengers.
Planes shivering in the stream
like a union of water and electricity
preparing to spawn.
And that was how I arrived in
Black Africa.


II.

‘Anni, give me five seconds of innocence!’
you said angrily. Five seconds of innocence?
In five seconds the coat hooks on the wall
reveal themselves as scorpions; the postman
as the village blackguard.

And the playful pilot boys who whiz low
in their white, unmarked light aircraft
to take a look at the only long, blond hair
on the West African coast – they are
hired assassins sent by the President of Togo
on the return flight after dumping
the corpses of opposition figures
in mid-ocean.

The entire coastline a deserted sandy beach,
an endless and hard-to-measure (because
constantly in motion) paradise that
like prepares for like.
I am sure that this century we will get
at least 20,000,000 white-haired American tourists
to lie on those sands, under the divine sun.
The developers are in their trenches. Monsieur Paul
is finishing his sixth whisky of the morning.
under the sun canopy. If you were here,
you would sometimes visit the barber’s
whose name is ‘Glory to God’,
buy cigarettes from the ‘Palace of Miracles’ kiosk.
Perhaps attend the ‘One God’ driving school,
and then you’d soon need the garage called ‘In Jesus’ Name’.
You see I told you not because
of beauty but of truth. Honestly
and truly, look at that restaurant’s
name: ‘Pay Now, Eat Later’.


III.

The breakers rise out of a pale green mangle
and scoop the sand from under one’s feet,
throw themselves on each other, over and
over again, never turning round.
The seashells drag themselves ashore
after the ocean has sucked out their insides.
Crabs, even faster than Nikolai,
soft and transparent as
Scandinavian hair.
Death half putrefied.
In my face a mixture of saltwater and sand,
tears and sun lotion –
this is how I say goodbye to you.
Had to come to Africa for this.

In Africa I stopped crying.
On the Slave Coast, in Ouidah
Slave Port I just couldn’t cry any more
for lost love, a lover turned cold.
Part of the boatload took their own lives on the shore
by self-strangulation or eating dirt,
fearing they would be
eaten on being captured.

Driving by jeep through Cotonou –
the second most polluted city in the world
and the salty wind gave me a Rasta hairdo –
as the fishermen spent hours trying
to bring their canoes ashore through the surf, the storms –
I just couldn’t cry.

The two-metre high breakers, all-devouring,
striking the all-devouring sand of the shore
would take care of me in a couple of minutes
quickly and cleanly, no trace would remain,
the ocean would drown me in a couple of waves,
the sand would eat my bones, how could anyone
feel sorrow on these shores?

In a little while, there’s
nothing left of us, Nikolai.


IV.

In a regular wave-motion the bats dodge
round street lamps planted with regular lights.
An old man hobbles into the yard with his long thighs,
and nimbly squats to shit in front of our house,
his backside grey with dust.
I love you, it always occurs to me
when I least expect it. The old man’s hands
play, write your name absent-mindedly
in the sand, somewhere the ice is cracking.
Perhaps it would be better to love Bruce
Chatwin, author of The Viceroy of Ouidah,
Him I do not know at all, and besides he is
dead. No pain... Painless.


V.

I just couldn’t cry any more.
The roadside poster campaign for
the child vaccination program.
A boy crosses the endless beach,
his legs crippled by polio. Now and then
he stops to rest on his pair of crutches.
Behind him walks a man whose teeth
are like a broken line of goose barnacles.
His skin smells permanently
of damp-stained bedclothes.
He leaves in the sand a torn-up letter
written in the blank space of a language lesson
hand-out: ‘Should I write you a letter,
say all those things you have heard before.’


VI.

In my blood, latent like malaria,
you may still break out even after several years.
I may call you from under my mosquito net.
Silicon plugs in my ears, drunk and
almost knocked flat by a sleeping pill,
for the moment I am safe from your influence.
But I can already hear the high-pitched whine,
and when I wake up in the morning
my face will be swollen with your bites.

Okay, I forgive you,
I even forgive the ocean for
unexpectedly overflowing on my towel and
tearing me by my hair into the tide
that never shows up when I wait for it
like Nikolai on dates, the ocean
that splatters the poor fishermen’s nets
full of smiling, head-sized jellyfish,
the sun before which hangs a grey
dust filter – the Harmattan –
Nikolai, like the African
cactus inevitably crushed
by a Finnish poet wandering
in the darkness, raising her bleeding,
pleading hands towards you.
The ocean, that needs my forgiveness
as much as Nikolai, as much as
the grains of sand that encrust my skin
and still remember the great mountains;
that drowns the heart attacks,
wipes out the after-effects, blows
the foam away from its skirts.

Blocked into a cul-de-sac a creature starts to grow
filling the whole labyrinth with its tentacles until
in some dimension of its own it finds the exit
from that Africa-shaped heart, the cloud,
the refugees fill the barges of the people smugglers.

“Akó akó,” the boys sing in their croaking voices,
I see someone sweeping the sand.
They could wash the ocean too.
The waves suck and blow at the coastline,
rocking the booming shore as
tenderly as a well-balanced mother.

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Poem by Anni Sumari

Here is Göran, here is Marisa.
They have nothing in common except
that both have slept in your bed,
though at different times, without meeting.
You don’t care, you’ve decided they do have something in common:
Göran and Marisa.

You’re afraid of the night and the spider of punishment.
So you create more people to keep you company,
to share the spider of night.
Isn’t fear a good enough reason for the work of creation?
After all, you know that in spite of assertions to the contrary
I don’t exist. You don’t exist.
We have never met.
Reincarnation happens faster than you blink an eye —
you blink, and look, it’s already happened.
Everything you see is reincarnated
over and over again.
We see each other, all the same.
We see what doesn’t exist.

You know that you don’t exist, and you unswervingly take advantage of it.
If anyone tries to tie you to “yourself”, to your past,
to the words you don’t want to remember,
to the promises you made from curiosity to see the consequences —
then you perform the vanishing trick, slip away through your hands,
sucked through the walls like the sigh of a Moor.

You are poured from one cup to another,
and it is over.
Wouldn’t it be more clever of you
to create a few fantasies, illusions,
a Göran and a Marisa.

Göran
does not like flowers, because they are small.
“It would all be different if the petals were a metre long,” he says.
The enchanted garden begins to take shape,
the stamens and pistils crawl out of their holes with arms outstretched.
Not one flower with petals less than a metre long.

Marisa too feels comfortable in this kind of garden.
She has suffered a lot, that’s what she says.
She has been rejected and oppressed, hated through no fault of her own
and squeezed juiceless as a grater.
Marisa has been abused as much
as one can abuse
something totally worthless.

Marisa had the guts to tell you a story and told it well,
you smiled, but that was all there was to give
and all that Marisa would want to have,
and then a nightingale sang.
You heard it: a nightingale sang.
And Marisa said: “A nightingale sang.”

Her vigorous gaze
her tangled need of love
was just like anyone else’s.
and you had no more pity for her than for anyone else,
and you were no gentler to her than to anyone else.
As the nightingale sang it became obvious
that there was a world even more cruel,
even more perfect.

Marisa said: “Haven’t I fought like a stone
against all kinds of wearing away?
At the same time I rolled out of everyone’s hands.
There are two people in me who develop at different speeds:
one, wanting less and less, until I don’t want anything.
and one, able to give less and less, until I can’t give anything.

I can feel my body better and better,
or more exactly its presence,
It anchors my mind more powerfully,
I suffer from its presence more than before.
I’m a stone I will drop on my own face
after I’ve lifted it over my head.”

Everything sinks,
everything subsides
except one’s breathing.
A little movement out
and then a drawing in.
From one’s breathing one can conclude
that space is not expanding infinitely.
Now “it” is breathing out,
because the celestial bodies
are moving farther from each other,
but the breathing in will follow.
Unless before that the spirit ends.
The spirit that was supposed to be endless.

Göran says: “What’s peace?
Hey, I’ve got peace in my soul.
At least at home I know I’m home.
Every night I stare at the blue of the TV
and masturbate as I caress a fur hat.”

The time glows in the dark garden of the television screen.
The times light up one by one,
reveal themselves to their coevals, go out in the darkness.
The heavy darkness presses down, shrinks together.
Life passes by, but past what?
With each breath the memory inhales oblivion.
The Pain-healer puts the hooks away
for later use.

Breathe deep, there they are.
Cute identical twins,
you noticed them right on the first day:
the losing and the winning.
Just as surely as the one goes out,
the other comes in,
and you are no longer sure
which is which.

The inner dialogue continues briskly
on the only branch of a lonely tree.
The characters of the dialogue are born into their roles,
enter from the wings when needed.
Göran and Marisa quickly take their places, their problems —
they arrive in the situations to which they are summoned.
So different from the inner monologue’s
unreliable narrator.

Because of the fear and the darkness
on the outskirts of town things happen
that make innocents suffer.
Rapes, armed robberies,
the new life is born there.
Here is Göran, here is Marisa.

Göran and Marisa filled your bed, your space, your desires.
Without the long, transparent chain of primary causes
they combined in you to make an imaginary creature,
perfect, hermaphrodite.
Their astonished faces in a bed, down a well
or on an island anchored in the ocean
to which the perfect being flees.


Anni Sumari


translated from Finnish by David McDuff