Kaarlo Sarkia



Kaarlo Sarkia (11 May 1902 – 16 November 1945) was a Finnish poet and translator who was influenced by romantic poetry. His poems include motifs like childhood memories, love, landscapes and dreamworld, and in his last collection of poetry also his personal death and mankind's sufferings. Together with Uuno Kailas, Sarkia was the most prominent Finnish poet of the 1930s. As Kailas, his poetry also had homosexual themes.

Quotes

 * Vain henkäyksen verran riemus kesti, vain silmänräpäyksen tuskas syvä. Maan helmaan lempeään kuin peltoon jyvä nukahdat hiljaa, uinut suloisesti. Niin Kauneus, min täyden kasvun esti tään elos vajavuus, nyt täydentyvä on kuolemassas, muotoon ylentyvä kukoistavaan ja uuteen tuhannesti. Maa sinut sireenien, niinipuiden suo hautaas haparoiviin valkojuuriin, vie suonet umpuihin, ja suvikuiden. tulessa kukkiin hunajaisiin, suuriin puut puhkeaa – näin untes säteileväin suloista täyttymystä kantaa keväin.
 * Translation: Your joy is only moment’s exhalation, at most a blink of eye is your dejection. As sweetly falls your silent sleep’s protection you sink in soft earth’s breast, like wheat’s oblation. Thus Beauty, whose completed germination was hindered by unfinished life’s perfection, will in your dying see a resurrection – a thousand-fold its great reanimation. For when you’re in your grave you’re handed over to probing roots of lilac and of lime tree, to buds the sap is drawn above the clover. aflame to burst in summer’s honeyed finery of blossomed trees, and so your radiant dreaming will sweet fulfilment find in springtime’s teeming.
 * Lingua Fennica, Translation by Rupert Moreton