Aiming for Love Enduring
Even the overwhelming sun shall die,
but not my love, which shall ever endure,
and remain in its youth while stars end in sigh;
my love shall last, for it is pure.
You scoff? I tell you, you see only in part;
your equations cannot be stretched so far;
you have no experiments in the ways of the heart
and have never actually measured love against star.
Your scoffing is just that, scoffing,
bare assertion that no evidence has known,
but if you are right, then at your death-coughing
you will have only a scoff and be wholly alone.
But if I am wrong, you and I are on even plane,
and if I am right, I have aimed high above;
and if I am right, my love shall always remain,
and if I am wrong, I shall have ventured in love.
On Reading Some Poems by Anne Hänninen
Little pawprints on the stairs
trace a history in the frost:
the little squirrel, like a cat
that leapt beneath the snowflakes.
On an angel's shoulders
sits the churchyard snow;
the winter flows forth
from the poet's throat.
Ice is around me; I am luminous
beneath the barely starlit sky;
I am luminous in the forest,
winter-barren branches leaping up.
My words are words of snow;
the chill wind is in my eyes.
But one day soon, like little pawprints,
only traces of me will remain
on the flowing borders of winter,
ever melting and boundless.
