#3

Nov 01, 2005

At night they seek shelter,
eyeing their own solitude
through the dark.
Morning
tosses them into the air
like stones
that have shed
Earth’s gravity
and carry on flying
upwards.

– Translated from the Estonian by Ilmar Lehtpere

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.