The Tale of the Poem and the Seven Absurdities

Fluffy cat in fluffy tree
The Tale Is Dreadfully Sweet And Fluffy

Antu of the Poem:

I can go either way, or neither – I am entirely free to do whatever I please.

Snappish:

You did something wrong, nothing will come of that, I sneak and pad about, stalking your freedom into phantoms.

Aloof:

I let it be understood that nothing whatsoever will come of that, yet I’m in on it, because I sense something I am free to seize, something someone senses, someone who will surely see what I express, and the writer too, later, through another language, if

Eager Doubter:

Of course it will come to something, for in me there is a fire with roots of its own, and I’ll bring it even to what you’re doing, I whoosh like the universe and the void, and off we go – or do we?

Antu of the Poem:

Now it is time to dream.

DANGLE-ANKLE:

I’m only human too! No, we’re not talking about this now! Don’t get stuck on this! People die! You have wide networks! No! These things happen! That’s life!

(Leans in.)

I incline towards you!

(Straightens up.)

I’m on holiday.

Antu of the Poem:

Now it is time to write.

YesNoMaybe:

Great, there’s more over there but I’ll come back here too, perhaps this calls for commitment well well I might come back keep the door open I’m running off now looking back tripping over my own feet – kipsis kapsis.

Immediate:

Worlclass, publish it now, don’t think don’t fix, the world is at my feet, everything straight out! Oh, look how that turned out! Don’t learn any more.

Sweet Diminisher:

I’ll take you in, as long as you stay the way I understand you. Lovely, but what was this again, I forgot. Of course I’ll come, but I haven’t the time, there’s someone more important.

Antu of the Poem:

The tale is dreadfully sweet.

Thanks to Aino-Marjatta Mäki for the Idea & to Goethe for Inspiration (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Vol II, Finnish Translation, Otava 1923, translator possibly J.A. Hollo)

Fluffy cat in fluffy tree

Strange Waters, Home Place

STRANGE WATERS, HOME PLACE POEM by Antu Sorainen 22 August 2026

Video with English subtitles, 54sec

STRANGE WATERS, HOME PLACE POEM by Antu Sorainen 22 August 2026

Explosion

soft rumble

grief in the stomach

life

alive or dead

I don’t touch you

you join the invisible

I make alive

not beautiful

but terrible beauty

wakes me

not you

Life is terrible

the weight in the stomach

lifts

for a moment

it is beautiful

Poem and video and photography: Antu Sorainen

Inspiration from Tagore’s short story Living or Dead? (The Hungry Stones And Other Stories, 1916)

Three Waters

Person looking through a large circular metal object by the water.

Three Waters – read by Sara McHaffie

Person looking through a large circular metal object by the water.

Water runs down my face and

covers me

I sink into the water

I am safe

I am unsafe

I go into the water I do not

Gasp for breath

One must submerge

The pressure of the water

Covers something in me

I have not lived through monsoon rain

I do not know the mind of

the monsoon

In the poet’s stories the riverbank is a danger

A child drowns

The mother swims

The guardian looks

No answer comes

I have not been close to

drowning

I shield myself with water

Is every attempt to breathe otherwise than is

expected rebellion

In the water the pressure breathes for me.

I have felt what it is

to be unable to breathe

Stone needs a viewer in order to be seen.

Water does not.

Water becomes a mask stone a mirror

where desire flickers an eternal face strange,

Recognisable

In water the mask is the water’s surface itself

through which a face only then appears.

Water takes identity, something changes.

I show you through which crack I look

Can the one who shields herself

join that which hates wounds

all the more alive and bare.

I am open to all who cross my path.

I long for what matters most, but I remember its shout.

What is not covered.

I have not turned to stone but does anyone look

Water and I keep our own tensions

still I can sink into it or let it run off.

What does water feel on the shoreland of fear and ease

Does water turn into a silent demand that no one may bleed into view

What does the

stone say then?

Rust, moss, cracking stone, melting snow: no surface remains.

Even the mask

rusts.

The spiral winds memory, wound, nature and the impossibility of the human

into one.

I return to water.

The rigid runs off me as rain.

Poem by Antu Sorainen

Read by Sara McHaffie

Photographs by Sara McHaffie and Antu Sorainen

Watercolour by Antu Sorainen

Thank you for inspirations The Culture Monks Monsuun Group