But To Think Is To Be Full Of Sorrow

 

 

Keep silent. And write.

Each letter is incomprehensible,

Broken no matter where you look.

Watch them. Your fevered skin

The only light.

 

Tap the rim of a cracked glass.

The heart is an anchor rope.

Now it flies in the night.

In the dark pages of this room 

I spell everything. Out loud.

 

 

–Jarkko Laine

(Translated from the Finnish by Stephen Kuusisto)