TRANSLATION

Three Poems

Translated from Finnish by Maija Mäkinen

By HELVI JUVONEN  |  05 OCT 2021

Elf Mushroom

An elf mushroom
huddled in rot
I’ve withstood and
disappeared to a dot,
brittle within and without
I’ve drunk the shadows of trees,
The sodden hay and worn-out dark
as my company.

When light briefly falls from a bough,
it studies me quick and leaves
only what hews to the ground,
what creeps and crawls in the dust,
what snakes and shifts
in boneless form
and coils and twists in the loam.


Pixie Lichen
Luke 17:21

The lichen lifted its fragile flute,
and the rain filled it, and in
a droplet’s gleam the sky shivered.
The lichen lifted its fragile flute:
Let us drink to the love in our lives.


Contented

In the woods, the hedgehog was most fond
of waddling in its coat
of faded straw, small
and black-footed,
puffing privately
and finding plenty.
The needles crackled, snickered,
leaves rustled when the wind
whispered its silly ditty,
something entirely inedible.

 

 

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Kääpiösieni

Kuin mädän keskeltä
nouseva kääpiösieni
olen jaksanut elää ja
olla haihtuvan pieni,
sisältä pintaan hauras ja
puitten varjoa imeä,
kanssani vetinen heinä
ja väsynyt pimeä.

Valo joskus oksalta ylleni sataa,
heti katsoo, se jää, mikä
maata mataa,
mikä tomussa toukkana ryömii
ja käärmeenä kääntyy,
mikä luuttomin muodoin
mullassa kiertyy ja vääntyy.

Originally published in 1949, in Kääpiöpuu by WSOY


Pikarijäkälä
Luuk. 17: 21

Jäkälä nosti pikarinsa hauraan,
ja sade täytti sen, ja pisarassa
kimalsi taivas tuulta pidättäen.
Jäkälä nosti pikarinsa hauraan:
Nyt malja elämämme rakkaudelle.

Originally published in 1952, in Pohjajäätä by WSOY

Nautinto

Metsässä siili nautti eniten,
kun lakastuneen ruohon karvaisena
se vaappui pienenä
ja mustin jaloin,
puhisten itseksensä,
hyvää löytäin.
Ritisten naurahteli neulaset,
kahisi.lehdet kieppuvat, kun tuuli
supatti niille loruansa tyhmää,
jotakin syötäväksi kelvotonta.

Originally published in 1952, in Pohjajäätä by WSOY

 

Helvi Juvonen (1919–1959) was a Finnish poet and writer known for pushing the boundaries of modernist poetry in Finland. Synthesizing the old and the new, her poems occupy the natural world as both setting and vehicle in her explorations of illness, suffering and religion, toward a metaphysical understanding of the world. A respected poet in her own time, Juvonen also translated the work of Emily Dickinson into Finnish. For the last ten years of her life, she lived with her female partner Sirkka Meriluoto, and in 1957, she was awarded the prestigious Eino Leino Prize for literary achievement. Her works continue to find new audiences, giving Juvonen a permanent place in the Finnish imagination.

Maija Mäkinen is a Finnish-born writer and translator and winner of the 2020 Iowa Review Award in Fiction. Her writings on place, belonging and immigrant memory, along with her literary translations, have been featured or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review; Short, Vigorous Roots (Ooligan Press, 2022), Porter House Review, Gulf Coast, The Bare Life Review, and others. She is the winner of the 2017 Nadia Christensen Prize in Translation, the University of Cambridge Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, and recipient of residency fellowships to Art Omi: Writers. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Boston University and lives in Brooklyn.

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