Paavo Haavikko

“Finnish is not a language, it is a way of setting at the end of the bench with your fur cap pulled over your ears.”
― Paavo Haavikko

“A beautiful child sat playing in the sand
And finger-writing:

Who? Where from? Where to?

I answered,

O beautiful child, tell me, is

Interrupting me:

I am two children, hand in hand,

I wanted to know:

O beautiful child who finds it so easy to talk,
tell me, where does the grass-tree grow,
where does the grass flower,
the wind and the breath of the wind,
the strawberry, the leaf of grass, the rose?

Again, it broke in:

I am not at one with myself,
I am full of contraries,
I talk about anything, I am a boy and a girl,
one and two,
and you, are you night and day?

I said:

I am a poor robber, a productive consumer
looking for honest labour,
I want to go back to where I was born,
either/or or and/or
the board-panelling of the outside walls either
horizontal or vertical or/or not,
I want to be silent, there.

It shouted:

But first you have to calm down the wind,
the walking wind, the dense tree-growing wind!

And l:

O syntax, that has only a few exceptions.
You, slyness of sincerity,
you rule.

It wanted to know:

Why are you praising the language that rules?

I would like to teach this poem a lesson, I said,
I can' t get rid of it,
this breath has grown trees. . .
I came from there, I took the road through the forest,
but oh, it was stormy weather,
autumn weather...

That child then said:

But, if it gives way
why shouldn't you try to be free,
to walk through the night. and look for someone
whom it would fit, .
that uninhabited breath?”
― Paavo Haavikko, Selected poems