April 2, 2013

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  Annie Millicent  

   

  He will resurrect her

  He will bring her back from where her soul reposes

  She will be reborn one of these nights through his will

  She will be reborn one of these nights through his words

  She will tell him what it is like to lie in this lonely place

  Interred within this unsympathetic necropolis

  For more than a hundred years

   

  "Is her's the only Roman marker

  Preserved among so many Lutheran stones?"

   

  She will float up out of the icy ground

  She will appear to him as he imagines himself beside her

  She will whisper to him about herself one of these nights in a dream

  She will curl up in his arms and never be afraid again

  She will know he'll understand because he is the father of daughters

  She will burrow inside his anorak and be warm again

  Shielded from the shivering arctic winds

  Moaning through the scattered monuments

   

  "Was she a bright lovely child or a spoiled difficult little girl?

  And does it really matter?"

   

  She will tell him about her friends and the happy games they played

  High above this fledgling town - Up here on the Pyynikki Ridge

  Sliding down its white hills on the sparkling winter snow

  Running up its green hills on summer afternoons

  As their nannies gossiped about their mothers' minor sins

   

  "Even then - She was always within sight of her eventual grave

  With the loom of the Aleksanterin Cathedral hovering"

   

  Yes - She will tell him about herself

  She will whisper to him about her mother - How beautiful she was

  And how much her mother truly loved her

  And that she forgives her mother for what happened

  And she will speak to him about her father one of these nights in a dream

  How handsome and kind and clever he was

  And how much he truly loved her

   

  "But why did they leave her to rot in this lonely place?

  Why didn't they take her home to Hampshire with them"

    

  She will tell him about the men in frock coats and stove-pipe hats

  Who came to talk with her father in their gracious dining room

  And smoked cigars and sipped brandy beneath the grand chandeliers

  As they unrolled long sheets of ivory parchment on the great table

  And spent long hours discussing them and marking them with quill and ink

  While their maid served coffee and Karelian pies

  Was her father the High Manager at the new mill

  Or the Chief Engineer come before she was born

  To harness the rapids roiling between the lakes?

   

           "In Affectionate Remembrance of

                     ANNIE MILLICENT

                          Daughter of

               Henry and Betsy Horrocks

                 Who Departed This Life

                     February 10, 1879

                        Aged 7 years

       'Of Such is the Kingdom of Heaven' ''

   

  Will she tell him how she died?

  Perhaps she was knocked down by a run-away horse

  Pulling a sleigh beside the Mariankatu?

  Perhaps her mother averted her gaze for a few moments

  As she played with her friends in this little park

  And the crazed animal stomped her into the snow turned red with her blood

  At this very spot where she lies in the frozen earth

  Because her father wished it so

   

  Will she tell him how the grave-diggers built a great fire to thaw the ground

  And that her parents left for England and home that same bitterly cold day

  After they lowered her broken body into the ground?

  Of course - She won't tell him of her father's magical vision

  He sees it for himself each evening from his daughter's house

  Up here on the Pyynikki Ridge*

  As the city below glitters and gleams with its myriad lights

  He accepts better than most - Those crinkled parchment sheets

  Transformed into the proletariat poet's urban paradise

   

  "From the country-side they came - Not just from the North

  But also from the West, from the East and from the South

  From all parts came a constant stream of new human material

  Those tough fixtures of the land who with a dream in their hearts

  Finally decided to take charge of their fortunes -

  This is how they came - Those who built this town for us!"

    

   Lauri Viita - (Moreeni - 1950) - Tampere Finland

   

  *Our youngest daughter married an exchange student from Tampere and has lived there

   for many years.                                            Lauri Viita is the poet-laureate of Finland.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  • 10:07 am
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