By Jürgen Rooste.
The Dadaist State (Dadaistlik Riik)
when I was younger
I understood no art
it wasn’t even possible
for I grew up inside it
was a part of it
I was born in the soviet union
a commie with an artist’s soul was taking refuge
together with other war-despisers and artists
in zurich
there – in the midst of cafes and cabarets
there – in the midst of wine craze and opium passion
in the city of erotic charges
and electric discharges
dadaism was born
and Lenin – that artistic soul –
(for haven’t there been enough
clowns and artmakers
clairvoyants and charlatans
among them bloody dictators) –
there Lenin saw Duchamp
you know – Duchamp
dadaist postmodernist ready-made-man
Rose Selavy
he put a pisspot on the stage
and called it a fountain
and Lenin looked
and saw
that it was good
something like that
something as beautiful
something as mighty and special
he too wanted to create
and he did
he created a pisspot as big as a state
and we – estonians – looked at it
for twenty years from the outside
and then
then for half a century from the inside
straight from the heart of art
I know
there was no communism
not in the Soviet Union at least
only dadaism there was
Lenin and Duchamp
bonded by friendship
and in the sewers of eternity
that pisspot
as big as one sixth part of the planet
had a fatal influence on my sense of art
I still can’t get rid of that feeling
as if I lived in a book or a movie
as in a gigantic pisspot
and that soon the hand of an evil artist
shall flushshshsh!!! me down
(translated by Karl Martin Sinijärv)
Metrics and Ethics (Meetrika ja Eetika)
part 1
a philosophical question
as eventide falls
lukewarm whisky sloshing
in a smeared glass
an old-fashioned, eight-faceted one
like a vase where the spirit
takes its proper form and blooms like
an aarrrring thorny flower – a flesh-eating plant
hallelujah
metrics and ethics should together make
ethrics
something that deals with the overworldly
something that deals with the rotten core of society
and with a man and his abandoned woman and their love
which was young like a cut willow wand
seeping still its acrid sap
hallelujah
metrics is life’s pulse its syntax
it is how the platonic cardiogram passionately
writes itself on your wrist and temples as sentences
when you touch another person’s wrists and temples
and every pulse is a copy of that very pulse
and an echo and yet again a unique rhythm
rhythm of the body rhythm of the bodies rhythm of many naked and lustful bodies rhythm of heavenly bodies and a whirring rollercoaster of solstices
life’s constant pulsing and ticking rhythm beaten out by
carbon atoms
annual rings in tree trunks
broods of foxes between flood waters
the hardened heart of a civil servant that missed his bus
the departure of the shore swallows and the return – always the return
stubble growth repeated to the point of bluntness and a young girl’s
a mere girl’s first menstruation
the coca cola company’s seasonal advertising campaigns
stories in scandal sheets and tabloids of murder and infidelity
and the overall decaying souring and rotting of everything
which is like an unbroken unstoppable bouncing electro beat
and even in its most hideous forms proclaims life itself
this is the true metrics
hallelujah
ethics is when I can still stay human
even when god’s throne is empty even when I have no
work no home no days off or public holidays
ethics is when a lion attacks a lamb and some infant animal’s mother
tries to save its life against overwhelming odds
rather ethics is a teaching in
where we should draw borders and lines
sometimes doing nothing
not interfering, indifference saving one’s own skin staying silent
may be terribly unethical
ethics is a mere teaching with a platonic aspiration
whose spark in every human being is of course unique
and in that case undeniably right but which nevertheless
has demanded from mankind itself to be made a legacy
in the form of culture and laws like we today have laws
even culture
it is a republic at a watershed
in the waning of former ages and worlds
hallelujah
(Translated by Eric Dickens)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jürgen Rooste was born in Tallinn in 1979. He studied Estonian linguistics at the Pedagogical University there and has worked as editor of the cultural weekly Sirp. He has also been the head of the Estonian Institute in Helsinki and a member of the creative group Tallinn Young Creators. In 1999, Rooste published his first collection Sonetid (Sonnets), which was awarded the Betti Alver Prize. His subsequent books have included Veri valla (Blood Wide Open, 2000), Lameda taeva all (Under the Flat Sky, 2002), Rõõm ühest koledast päevast (Joy of a Dreadful Day, 2003) and Ilusaks inimeseks (To Be a Beautiful Person, 2005). In 2000 he compiled an anthology of punk poetry Tagasi prügimäele (Back to the Scrap Heap) and was one of the translators of Allen Ginsberg’s collection America, published in 2003.
