translated from the Finnish by Niina Pollari
Sisyphus
Nobody had seen Sisyphus
since the birth of the universe,
when he disappeared with his rock
somewhere beyond the clouds.
“That’s not how the story went,”
my daughter stated. Go to sleep now
I said and smoothed her
sun-woven hair.
I closed the curtains, let the twilight
descend into the room. My daughter
was right. I had seen Sisyphus
yesterday morning on an adjacent street
pushing a wheelbarrow piled full
and again at night, late
in the sky beyond the moon.
Only During Rain
According to old beliefs
raindrops are souls returning from heaven.
They have a secret knowledge
about what it’s like to be born again
and then evaporate away.
No matter how much I love them
I sigh deeply
when I travel to work in the morning
and the rain has subsided,
heavy clouds giving way
and the light clambering from its bed
after a long winter.
Teemu Helle is the author of seven collections of poetry in Finland; work in translation can be found in The Los Angeles Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, mercury firs, EuropeNow, periodicities, and Vittles.
Pollari translated Tytti Heikkinen’s poetry collection The Warmth of the Taxidermied Animal (Action Books). She is also the author of two poetry volumes, Dead Horse (2015) and Path of Totality (2022).
