Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen: from Happy cow poems

[Queenie's back...]

Queenie’s back was white as driven snow,

stars glowed on her brow and shoulders.

I fall on my knees with longing.

What raises me up is Queenie’s command,

merciless and therefore full of comfort.

When Queenie’s giving milk we talk about the thirst for life,

what we can’t control:

JOY! JOY! JOY! What you can’t command you can ask for

JOY! JOY! JOY! What you can’t hide

you must ask for more of, in order to carry on

Queenie’s voice echoes in the empty cowshed

the call of the driven-through-the-ages bellwether,

I’ll even walk through the walls

if what leads me is good.

[Let the cows out...]

 

Let the cows out on Monday

and they’ll enter the forest, wander far

aim for the waterfalls, the hole in the rock and down the precipice.

The dead come back along the road to our yard:

Rebecca, Isolde, Rosamunda.

Allison, Eulalia, Euphrosyne.

Not as ghosts but as old friends.

Whom will they, the wingless ones, protect here?

A lean lass, a lean lass.

Tr. Herbert Lomas. Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen was born in 1977; Happy cow poems (Iloisen lehmän runot), her third volume of poetry, appeared in 2009. Its theme appears to be small ecstasies and larger puzzlements.