Juri Talvet [Estonia]

 

Summer in the Homeland

 
This Lucifer, this Cerberus, this tsar, this
neighbor man – ten rows of steel teeth, a mask
renewed each night and each day –
this one who never sleeps, behind all masks
his mouth in his eyeless skull, a Minotaur who
consumes virgins, but has no comfort, whose heart festers
– is he eternal?
 
I pat my pockets, my prescriptions all in a mess –
where are agape and eros and where did I put philos?
All the expiration dates passed long ago, nothing is fresh!
 
No answer, but yesterday in the sky I saw
swallows again, tiny splinters of summer from the south,
and at night perhaps you, mother, led me upward
to a higher place, in the mountains where the horizon
offered my eyes light:
 
I breathe the smell of pine sap and fir needles,
of snow, home, and an unnamed country. 
                                                                   (2014)

 
(Translated from the Estonian by the author and H. L. Hix) 
 
 
The Swaying Train Teeters Nearer The Brink
 
The swaying train teeters nearer the brink unwillingly
I notice in your voice that you are tense mister JT Is
there no one to stroke your hair? The salvage yard
at the border reads as a permanent installation
of group sex a symbol of the despair of an age
A cloud of seagulls obscures the sky Its explanation
is the neglected skull of a dump between snow fields
Bison never actually grazed in Buffalo though
camels with double humps and double meaning have been
abundant always on both sides of the border Heigh-ho
this high over the canyon one gasps for breath!
The camera caught far below the bristling
of the river’s broad back before Niagara breaks it
on its knee Tor-onto-onto-onto-onto-onto-onto
the train sings Nobody can pull love’s axes from
the heart’s knotted stump Between the triple time of
Strauss’s joy waltz there is room for the pain of the entire
sea voyage the blood voyage – even though for a while
your fluttering skylark’s nest cupped in the palm of my hand
objected each night with courage and frailty
 
(Translated from the Estonian by the author and H. L. Hix) 
 
 
Building Chairs is Science
 
            To the memory of dear Richard Caddel, friend and poet,
            with the wish that he could return tomorrow at ten.   

            
Did the rabbit taste good? Fine.
The salmon? Well. The world’s
pulse under your eyelids is indeed
a fine image. (At least you can
feign sleep.) The noble union
of physics with poetry: It’s fine
that one can at least relax
into the groove of a bar stool in a
warm small town in Georgia. (If
there’s room.) In both Delhis, however,
when it grows dark, only thinking
of gods in a temple, with a cool stone
in the knees, redeems one from the jungle.
Did what’s on the grill taste good? I’m glad. I
am happy. How was the chicken? I weave
a spider web for some stranger to get
caught in. Some other from far away,
on the edge. Some Indian cow,
covered with Hegel’s grey, boiled
spider web. (Thank you, Heinrich!)
You say you really won’t go? You
shall go tomorrow morning at ten.
And you will return tomorrow
morning at ten. Won’t you? 
 
(Translated from the Estonian by the author and H. L. Hix) 
 

 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Jüri Talvet was born in 1945 in Pärnu (Estonia). A graduate of the University of Tartu (1972) and a PhD by Leningrad (St. Petersburg) University (1981), he chaired from 1992 to 2020 World / Comparative Literature program at Tartu University, where he also founded Spanish Studies. Today he is Professor Emeritus. In 2016 he became elected member of Academia Europaea. He has published in Estonian more than twenty books of poetry and essay. His books have appeared beyond Estonian in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Serbian, Japanese, Catalan, Greek and Macedonian translation. In Estonian, he has published a monograph on Juhan Liiv’s philosophic-lyrical poetry “Juhan Liivi luule” (Tallinn, 2012), while his “Critical Essays on World Literature, Comparative Literature and the "Other"” (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019) importantly concerns aspects of ethical literary criticism. Since 1996 he has acted as the main editor of “Interlitteraria”, international journal for comparative literature.  He has been awarded Estonian Annual Prize of Literature for essay (1986), Juhan Liiv Prize of Poetry (1997), Ivar Ivask Memorial Prize (essay, poetry, 2002) Naji Naaman International Literature Honor Prize (for complete works, 2020), Estonian National Science Prize for Lifework (2021), Jaan Kross Literary Prize (for world poetry translations, 2022), "Golden Ivy" International Poetry Prize (Fushun, China, 2022), International Aco Karamanov Poetry Prize (North-Macedonia, 2023), Overall Poetry and Essay Prize of Orpheus Festival, Plovdiv, Bulgaria (2025), etc.   For further data, including his full lists of publications, see http://talvet.edicypages.com/en  ; https://sisu.ut.ee/ewod/t/talvet