Jusa Peltoniemi
trans. by Susan Bernofsky & Jusa Peltoniemi
THREE POEMS
Deer and Children
From a distance
it looks like deer tracks in the snow.
A bit closer, you think:
a child walked this way,
with a heavy schoolbag, perhaps.
And closer still: no, they are
just deer tracks.
[Untitled]
I feel you going astray,
stop,
take one step to the side.
Soon the path will stand out in relief once more.
Our paths need to know when we get
lost.
Self-Portrait
I was flying a kite, I let the line
reel out,
even tied on a second,
then another one still.
The kite flew for miles and months
(and another one still).
Then the kite fell into a clump of alders
and I went wading through willowherb, meadowsweet, cattails
strawhatted
to find it.
Then neighbor Paavo turned up, wanting
to let me know
that now all that was missing
was a lopped-off ear.
Jusa Peltoniemi is a Finnish writer and dramaturge who currently teaches in both of these fields as a professor at the Theatre Academy of the University of The Arts Helsinki. He has published poems, novels, plays, radio plays, and opera librettos.
Susan Bernofsky teaches literary translation in the MFA Writing Program at the Columbia University School of the Arts. She has published translations of works by Robert Walser, Jenny Erpenbeck, Yoko Tawada, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, and others, and is currently writing a biography of Robert Walser for Yale University Press.