Triin Paja
Windswept Field Whispering
your skull in my dream, tucked and carried
under my dark wing.
this is the dream telling me you have died.
dream, I already know
the flowers beyond nothingness.
I roam among frosted reeds to the sea.
far on the sea ice, barely read as people,
are people, the small darknesses.
my skirt fills with the sea-wind
into a shape like laughter.
another wind in my life.
another wind: you held me
in a windswept field whispering
listen to the wind, listen to the wind.
it was summer. we were in a field, a poem.
I hid mandarins in your pocket
because you loved them, and because I loved you.
The Clarity of Feverish Wings
I bury a deer antler
wishing a fawn to grow from the wet earth
as a tree might.
these childlike acts mean revolt to me.
even the fern has its rhythm of dying and reaching.
peeling mandarins all winter
I find grief in the peels curving into vessels
to carry you here. I know--
stop talking to the mandarin peels, Triin.
you are elsewhere.
your hair, a dark bird in mist.
mist, and the clouds.
branch-coloured marsh tits
hide in the branches.
the singing, twittering branches.
now
they flow out.
the clarity of feverish wings.
elsewhere, we devoured cauldrons of soup,
ravenously, lighting a grease lamp
in our bellies.
I go to a field to pour soup into the earth,
the dark mouth kissing you now.
I pour soup into the earth to feed the fawn.
then light, the tender enemy of memory,
begins to call for me.
Triin Paja is the author of three collections of poetry in Estonian. Her English poetry has received a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and other journals and anthologies.
Return to May 2023 Edition
your skull in my dream, tucked and carried
under my dark wing.
this is the dream telling me you have died.
dream, I already know
the flowers beyond nothingness.
I roam among frosted reeds to the sea.
far on the sea ice, barely read as people,
are people, the small darknesses.
my skirt fills with the sea-wind
into a shape like laughter.
another wind in my life.
another wind: you held me
in a windswept field whispering
listen to the wind, listen to the wind.
it was summer. we were in a field, a poem.
I hid mandarins in your pocket
because you loved them, and because I loved you.
The Clarity of Feverish Wings
I bury a deer antler
wishing a fawn to grow from the wet earth
as a tree might.
these childlike acts mean revolt to me.
even the fern has its rhythm of dying and reaching.
peeling mandarins all winter
I find grief in the peels curving into vessels
to carry you here. I know--
stop talking to the mandarin peels, Triin.
you are elsewhere.
your hair, a dark bird in mist.
mist, and the clouds.
branch-coloured marsh tits
hide in the branches.
the singing, twittering branches.
now
they flow out.
the clarity of feverish wings.
elsewhere, we devoured cauldrons of soup,
ravenously, lighting a grease lamp
in our bellies.
I go to a field to pour soup into the earth,
the dark mouth kissing you now.
I pour soup into the earth to feed the fawn.
then light, the tender enemy of memory,
begins to call for me.
Triin Paja is the author of three collections of poetry in Estonian. Her English poetry has received a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and other journals and anthologies.
Return to May 2023 Edition