Zola gets into Vanity Publishing - Preparing for next Hospital visit. Anyway the government sent me a memo : keep those Awks busy and off the streets it said.



The Elemental - Nocturnal Prolongations - My Dear Leino

To take a slow walk by the great Oulu lake-sea-sides, near Kajaani, in a summertime holiday mood, is to gently drift with the thickly, moving, impressions of a poetic place,thick and thin and full,with tradition. Eino Leino springs to mind here as being a still sprightly spirit of Paltaniemi. A solid sense of impishness is at play in this small hamlet with this peon pen that provoked the dance of life and death. His poetry still inspires some young Finns and old alike. He is dead and gone - he has joined, his own words, the - "scrubs of the deceased" - but, yet still so moving, he remains a bohemian as his texts continue to tip-toe through summer-nights and romances and us all. We the most unlikely ones. We the petty "will-o-wisp vanities" personified, glorified, to the point of extortion and unbelief. We the latest lost generation seeking to be big idols and yet refusing idealism. We, the latest example of that slave-trade culture of a mere risk and culture industry-for-itself. With such cultural bagage I walked gently into that good summer night with Eino Leino and he told me a little something as a gift-like happening.

First he "wispered" warmly the words : " Do as I do, beam like me and give blissful givings to the singer." He willed-me-to-power, that is. So as this wise old poet crept up upon me I dreamed my way into a kindred appreciation with such words, indeed.I replied to him as best I could in a summer-night-fever of intensity. I do follow his advice and I reply as I build as I labour with that kind of love which springs, naturally, with an Eino Leino poem. "Nocturne" (1905) is a good example - and I said to myself, at the time, god-damit, I will give this a bash. I would try and excel at the useless too. I was on a holiday ( my symbolic-freetime?) so all was up for grabs. So I tried a little something. A re-write of that Eino Leino poem. I tried to hang onto a dream. He lived as a collective unconscious meandering, spiriting, through and with the free-floating fields of vision as an elemental elf at play. Leino impelled me thus into experience. I was enthused to speak with worded worlds that denied not the speaking. Leino impelled me into an impish musical adventure. Leino helped me beat the city-devils and their sylvan satan.

Nocturnal Prolongations

Evening song; in my ear, corncrake calling, singing, under floodlights; Staged by a full moon.
Straw stooks standing, upright, swelling; as fodder-fields, landscapes; As my mind.

My summer night with so many warm hearts beating - yes.
Elemental My dear Leino.

Wood-smoked valleys appearing, drifting, as distance becomes, Alive, as time, as place, flies by.
As lakeside-fields fuse into twilights of peopled-times,
Fused by peopled-places alive now here and well.

I am not overjoyed ( romantic I am not) but yet neither am I so over sorrowed ( fatalistic I am not) to have followed this way where dark, still, woods still serve my own, full well, though veiled with the shifting moving shadows that beckon the new returning day which is always before and beyond just now.

Cumulus clouds, berries, blossom a yellow-red ending of a day, falling, sleepy-sometimes-all-times-well.
With shadows on the water-ways, streaming unto stillness, slowly, with the rested wind.
A little resting now yet still restless.
A Being as Being unto death which has no dominion.

Through blue-grey hills by blooming meadows,
Smelling, faintly strong,
A summer night edures, endears.
Out, within, those warm wild beginnings hearts hone well,
An end-home in the big song and I.

Why?
Why the melody?
Dark forest fevers, shadowy lake-sides, dusk time-settings?
Musical Adventures?
Serenity?
Why dance?
Because!! I believe, I feel, I am simply with.
I AM-with.
Elemental my dear Leino.

Because the proud leave only mere shadows of separations.
Because good young butterfly dreams waft along with life.

Why???

Why translucence, meek blue-greys and hills, beckon, alongside, faint fragrances,flowers, meadows, so strong in faintness?
And why, as the corncrake croaks and as the corn stooks stand, by,
Some sounds of music, as a crex-crex, are hard, brittle and warm?

Elemental my dear Leino.
The before and the beyond, as nocturnal prolongation.
We belong, just here and there and all,
Without possession, within.
Betwixt and between,
Dionysus dancing with Apollonian harmonies.
The wine is there to give life to the ordering,
Of things, just so, My dear.

But the primrose path is but a poor beauty without the wines of dandelions. The puff-balls frolic with the wind but such a flight of fancy is rooted. Youthful travels are but seeds branching out with their past-within. Betwixt and between, destiny, alive and freedom well. The wherewithall flourishes, seriously, at play.


Song? I sing, with,
That song which is no slave.
Songs not possessed.
That which cannot be owned and sold is sung.

My dear Leino, I have followed your advice.
We do not own our words unless we are to be slaves.
You never wanted us, sentenced, worded, slaved in prisons.
We cannot make poetics before and beyond the executions.

My dear Leino, aristocrat, expert of the useless,
Rose-bush-thorn,
Thou art master of intrigue with good reason-to-be.
You embrace, you travel-with,
Differences,
Far away to the centre.
Away from deathly indifference,
However.
Into moral metaphysical guilt.
But far, far, away from hubris.
Away from feigned fickle fancy.
You are a variable rainbow of delight where a wet sun smiles again.
As we wake with each new exotic morning,
To be a Diff-Errant.


My evening sings a deep serenity, faithful, as a summer hay-sweet male-maid-end song, singing no fatherland-motherland fickle feat.
I believe as, musical melancholy, an adventure glows and ... ,
Swells, ever fresh and green, in a still, strong and yet still soft, voice with-in.
The labours of love, an oak-leafed garland, thrives, translucent-true,
Displays,
The green and brown and blue and the white and ...

I will no longer chase the will-o-wisp vanities,
I find my home, here, my Being, here, elemental.
I will no longer be blown by the fake cold winds of war.
I leave behind me now, Idols, the culture industry, the fickle, The fickle image, cash nexus all.

I throw my little stones into warm still waters and watch and learn.
Concentric circles move with my imagination, bounced, back,
From The rocks.
All eccentricity is moved to shallow waters, as always,
Weather-cocks, are always, dead-asleep, as they spin around,
And around.
In dreams we spin a tale or two as the harsh and cackled crex-crex, eternally returns and ...
The crex-crex, corncrake, straw stooks standing, pave a path,
Before and beyond and ...
With those good intentions turning.
Philosophy in a nutshell my dear Leino.

Time is resting, well, now, with me and my own.
What is before returns, as I move, beyond peradventure again.
Eino - you have travelled yet again and I, for another, feel OK.
Why? Because we move even when we peer out, from a small window,
A sauna, box,
Screen.
Your view.
Elemental my dear Leino.


********************

My reply with Eino Leino might be but an impish reply from a bohemian "Jack-O'-Lantern". Indeed I have no claims to the "A.B.C" of expertise. But may I say here that Eino Leino tempted me into an "unknown room" and I felt like singing too. Perhaps I had no choice in the matter - I do not know. But I do care. If I have stolen gold from the devil up high I will be, no doubt, brought to new order. The good bohemian Leino would well forgive my virgin-adventures into and with the unknown. Fate is, I guess, always much more than we merely think it is !!!

Note : Eino Leino ( 1878-1928) is considered to be one of the Finnish poets that remains significant in the national identity stakes. His poem "Nocture" was first published 100 years ago, in 1905, in the book "Talvi-Yö". Today with this anniversary year in mind it does no harm to show some humble respect. The recent death of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas ( famous for his infinity of the infinity theme with the elemental) is also significant here in my attempt to allow the self-same happenings to find re-creation(al) displays. The professional philosopher, however, might find my interpretations to be a little to impish but such is the price we pay today for such summer-night frolics and jolly jaunts with the most necessary wild-side. Maybe Leino was a little child-like at times and maybe I write as I pick the petals and say "the philosophers like it ; the philsophers don't, the poets like it ; the poets don't ....". Maybe I write to publish thinking that Eino Leino might well like.

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