Tuona yönä: That Night
The moon did not show herself that night.
It was dark. The sky was cloudy.
Our lake had freed itself from winter’s frost.
Migrating birds returned in large and small flocks,
the gallant swans calling luuk, luuk, luuk,
the cuckoos arriving home from Africa.
Father smashed his violin against
the table when he returned from the front.
Fragments of spruce and maple fell to the floor.
The Russian flag will never be raised here.
Over the hills, the wind carried our song.
When neighbors heard our voices, they prayed.
None of you children will go to Swedish homes,
far from here. You would forget us, this place.
Mother said, it is an ugly name, evakko, refugee.
Almost like the word for sow, emakko.
Our cat hid in the familiar scenery of birch trees
and hay fields before departing. Much later,
when we returned, the road’s once tidy ditches
unraveled buried horses and enemy soldiers.
Louhi Pohjola was born in Montreal, Canada, to Finnish immigrant parents. She was a cell and molecular biologist before teaching sciences and humanities in a small high school in southern Oregon. She tends to write poems focused on the intersections of human behavior and the natural world, in particular, with black holes, the cosmos, and octopi. She is an avid fly-fisherwoman and river rock connoisseur. Louhi lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and her temperamental terrier. The latter thinks that he is a cat.
The Marbled Sigh 