Tuesday Poem: Juniper

by Andres Ehin

On Muhu island there’s a bawling bush

and pigs are sweating off steam,

while I sit in the blaze of the blinding sun

my heart beyond evil and good.

There are mutable axes a-morphing

into red-crested roosters and hens.

Horsey neighs whinny from an old milk can

Drawing round it the young and the old.

Schiller and Cobbler bursts from the can

canters madly about like a filly

then mindlessly snorts in a maddening way,

I’m thinking he has lost it completely.

but high in the sky a white cream jug,

with coppery handles gyrates,

forwards and backwards swings the night.

When I say the word, shoot me to kill.

On Mahu island there’s a bawling bush.

and pigs are sweating off steam.

I am dazed by the sun that is blinding,

my heart beyond evil and good.

Estonian writer Andres Ehin was born in Tallin in 1940. He now lives in Rapla with his wife, the poet Ly Seppel.