#1

Nov 01, 2005

In autumn
the ceiling of the chamber of your heart
becomes the ceiling of the sky.
Bird-eyed stars
sparkle
to the heart’s secret summer rhythm,
in autumn the stars are like birds,
in autumn everything is transformed.
One of these
(stars? birds?)
I covet in my palm
to feel how a star
is transformed into a bird
or bird into a star,
and to hear how it
(bird? star?) begins to sing.
In autumn the stars sing
at night.
In autumn
the ceiling of the chamber of your heart
becomes the ceiling of the sky.

Livia Viitol's latest volume is Läti pääsuke (2002), from which these poems are taken. In recent years she has been translating Latvian poetry into Estonian, and in her capacity as Deputy Director of the Vilde and Tammsaare Museum in Tallinn has done research into the emigration of Estonians to the Crimea at the end of the 19th century. She is freelance as of May 2005.