This ironic little study on the vagaries of government and society by Finnish post-modern poet Pentti Saarikoski now goes into the archive to make room for an indulgence on my part. Probably one of the three most seminal poems to my own worldview, this may not be the best poem Wallace Stevens ever wrote (that would be
13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, in my very humble opinion) or the most anthologized, but remains my personal favorite. So without further ado, his poem of transition, life, lust, hate, disgust, love, and survival,
Farewell to Florida. (Bear with me, the dark winter's just around the corner, and nothing could go along with it more fittingly.)
As with all the Off the Shelf selections, feel free to comment on either of these poems in this post here in the main stream since comments are disabled on the actual page, and also feel free to recommend a poet you'd like to see in Off the Shelf next time. I'm thinking it's time for a woman.
From The Invitation to The Dance, entry XXX by Pentii Saarikovski:
XXX
The tyrants were
people who took off their clothes
and put them on
worked late
shuffled papers
and citizens
from the In tray
to the Out tray
now government has no cordiality
the tyrants have been rationalized away
now machines that don’t get tired
or drunk
or dance Cossack dances
do the work
they talk like barbed wire being stretched
and you can hear what you are
you are a number one two three
or a four or a five a six a seven
or zero
these machines wouldn’t be possible
if they hadn’t been invented
Penttii Saarikoski
Translated from the Finnish by Anselm Hollo
Penttii Saarikovski was a Finnish poet, translator, bohemian, political activist and enfant terrible of Finland's literary landscape during the Sixties and Seventies. You can find some information about his life and times here in his wikipedia entry and also here.This poem is taken from the second entry in his Trilogy, Invitation to the Dance (1980) which represents some of his last published work.
