Jaan Kaplinski

“Springs and summers full of song and revolution.
The Popular Front, demonstrations and confrontations,
time that takes you away from yourself and your poetry,
so that you could see them as if from cosmic space,
a way of looking that changes everything into stars,
our Earth, you and me, Estonia and Eritrea,
blue anemones and the Pacific Ocean.
Even the belief that you will write more poems. Something
that was breathing into you,
as May wind blows into a house
bringing smells of mown grass and dogs' barks, -
this something has dissipated, become invisible
like stars in daylight. For quite a time I haven't
permitted myself to hope it would come back.
I know I am not free, I am nothing without
this breathing, inspiration, wind that comes
through the window. Let God be free,
whether he exist or no. And then, it comes
once again. At dusk in the countryside
when I go to an outhouse, a little
white moth flies out of the door.
That's it, now. And the dusk around me
begins little by little to breathe in words and syllables.


*

In the morning, I was presented to President Mitterrand,
in the evening, I was weeding nettles from under the currant bushes.
A lot happened inbetween, the ride from Tallinn to Tartu and to our country home
through the spring that we had waited for so long,
and that came, as always, unexpectedly,
changing serious greyish Estonia at once
into a primary school child's drawing in pale green,
into a play-landscape where mayflies, mayors and cars
are all somewhat tiny and ridiculous... In the evening
I saw the full moon rising above the alder grove. Two bats
circled over the courtyard. The President's hand
was soft and warm. As were his eyes,
where fatigue was, in a curious way,
mingled with force, and depth with banality.
He had bottomless night eyes
with something mysterious in them
like the paths of moles underground
or the places where bats hibernate and sleep.”
― Jaan Kaplinski

“Tõestuse puudumine ei ole puudumise tõestus.”
― Jaan Kaplinski, Teispool sinist taevast