Marie Under luuletused
Kokku 28 luuletust
Päev
Ma purjetan all sinise purje:
Oma kohkunud imetlust kui hõõguvaid urje
Kõigile, kõikjale kannan ja paiskan,
Kui raisataks kulda, nii oma liigpunast südant ma raiskan.
Kaks on mul tütarlast – olen neil ema või õde?
Kadakmarjasilmine üks ja teine on blond nagu nisu;
Ah: nende väikesed käed mu käte tukslev sisu,
Ehk kui mul sõrmed neil soojas lokkide siidis,
Pähkelpruunis ja kullases niidis,
Mis nii pudenev-pehme kui lume hebenev hõde,
Mänglevad, palmides neisse verevat paela,
Ehk võilillevartest kui põimin neil kee ümber kaela.
Jookseme alla siis kumerast kingu .....
Hommik
Igal hommikul uuesti sünnin ma
Roosana linade valevast vahust:
Üksikud nired blondjuuste kahust
Voolavad kollase viinana
Üle mu oime pärlvalge kausi.
Taas olen rõõsk, olen soe ja intiim!
Liuglevad sängist mu hingestet jalad,
Mis nagu sulatet kuuhõbest valat;
Niristab üle mind riiete piim.
Öö läbi päike on pidanud pausi,
Kuldset liiva nüüd kelmikalt pillub
Vastu mu väikseid uniseid ruute:
Kutsub mind sala kui kutsutaks pruute.
Süda mul mitmeks pudeneb, killub:
Aid on täis rohet ja tilku ning jahe kui kaev,
Aeva kui saladus suur, mis ärevaid aimusi annab.
Tä .....
Summer Memory
The door ajar, I stood at point of day,
Tiptoe for you and with awakened eyes.
The suns gold slipper trod the gravelled way,
The grasses spilled their dews in glad surprise-
And then you came out of a mist of flowers
That clung and swayed like knots of butterflies!
When afterwards we two, in softened hours,
Walked through the fields of rye all red for reaping,
I felt as if my heart obeyed new powers:
The old in me seemed either dead or sleeping,
And as I glimpsed the poppies fluttering fire,
An eager pleasure set my pulses leaping.
And you, these sang, could give me my desire.
Question
We saw those berries, over-ripe and glowing,
in weak and tepid light of the October sun
persisting red as blood, in right full-growing,
without much inkling of the winter clouds to come.
And then a wind-gust brushed those heavy bunches:
and some of them burst, falling to the ground
on wilted grass, soon after, under branches
gold leaves with purple berries lay around.
And hand in hand we walked uphill together
and pushed by the capricious wind's bad weather,
eye to eye, as in anxiety, we asked:
our love's moist, joyful red in present flowering,
will life's wind carry it away, devouring,
or .....
— Marie UnderNight
Over the garden the moons tide tumbles;
Shrubs are shaken by gusts and tremblings;
Pathways ribbon with sudden dissemblings
Towards the threshold where false foot stumbles.
Out of the soil of midnight, tender,
Lift my arms white tendrils and, weaving,
Motion to someone shadowy and absent,
Someone who tarries somewhere, perhaps may not be existent.
Oh, do I fear the days of torrid splendour,
Nights full of flowers? Oh, do I fear when I see that
These would not yield to the ultimate depths of my choosing?
My heart is breaking little by little
As a ripe pomegranate, skin parched brittle,
Breaks: .....
Ecstasy
Ah, earthly life burns in a myriad splendours
Not even deaths dark hazard can destroy.
I yield, a willing prisoner, to joy;
I never sorted with discreet pretenders.
And as the shaken glaucous wave engenders
Spindrift, so my green falling silks deploy
A froth, and all is stripped to the last toy,
And, caught in ecstasy, my sense surrenders.
Why does the blossom wanton in the light,
The blue horizon lure me to its border?
My body too is of their bent and order:
My every nerve vibrates to rapt delight,
And I distrain my life of its last treasure
As if my mounting days had brimmed their measure.
Denunciation
I cry aloud with all my people's mouths,
our land is smitten by a plague of fear and lead,
our land is shadowed by the gallows tree
our land a common graveyard, huge with dead.
Who'll come to help? Right here, at present, now!
Because the patient's weak, has lost his hold.
But, like the call of birds, my shouting fades
in emptiness: the world is arrogant and cold.
The sighing of the old, the baby's cry --
do they all run to sand, illusion, fail?
Men, women groan like wounded deer
to those in power all this is just a fairy-tale.
Dark is the world's eye, its ear is deaf,
the powerful lost i .....
Christmas Greetings 1941
I walk the silent, Christmas-snowy path,
that goes across the homeland in its suffering.
At each doorstep I would like to bend my knee:
there is no house without mourning.
The spark of anger flickers in sorrow's ashes,
the mind is hard with anger, with pain tender:
there is no way of being pure as Christmas
on this white, pure-as-Christmas path.
Alas, to have to live such stony instants,
to carry on one's heart a coffin lid!
Not even tears will come any more -
that gift of mercy has run out as well.
I'm like someone rowing backwards:
eyes permanently set on past -
backwards, yes - yet reach .....