Still thinking of Liiv Poem by Paul-Eerik Rummo

1
Or — maybe he never existed at all?!
Maybe there was only
snowfall
into a lake
and the melting
of snowflakes
into a lake
and their merging
as ice?

Cold. A crack
behind gray stands of aspen
in the forest. Something was broken
under the frosty sky.

2
Yes, did he exist at all?

Still, still he lived! — Oh how a chick pecks
the heart, like an eggshell, from the inside.
Already it sticks out its chest:
yes, we had, we had such a man,
a broadcasting tower in the swamp,
a man standing on a hill surrounded by lowlands!

No, no, by no means that!
In the name of the most common Thursday —
not that myth, that pompous and great one.
He is ours, and let us not make of ourselves
that myth, that pompous and great one.

He is ours — a small rippling lake.
He is ours — snow into a rippling lake.
A small lake that tries not to freeze,
keep itself and keep the forest around it,
keep the world in its only mirror.

We are one. A lake is in the forest and the forest is in a lake.
We are one. A lake rises into snow and snow falls into a lake.

Nothing more.
And only a crack.
In the forest or in the lake? A wooden heart? An icy cover?

Only not that myth, that pompous and great one
here under the silent, grieving white
frozen sky.

Translated by Jüri Talvet and H. L. Hix