Sorrow Trudges Along Beside Me
Written by Ly Seppel
Translated from the Estonian by Ilmar Lehtpere
Narrated by Kristine Doll
Estonia
Sorrow trudges along beside me like a skinny desert dog.
With its rough tongue it licks
my calves, the backs of my hands and behind my ears.
This desert dog
is always thirsty.
Tongue hanging out,
it pants along beside me
as we climb up the hill to the fortified village.
The riverbed at the foot of the hill
dried up long ago.
My faithful companion is always thirsty.
With a doggish look it peers through the door
into the back room of my memory:
remember, it says,
how in the heart of one hot day
while picking currants we started wailing for no reason at all.
Remember, it says,
I was the only one to keep you company
when you had no one to play with –
not a single child your own age
and all the older people were outside working.
Remember, it says, farm life in Estonia
after the great war
and before the great expanse of Siberia.
Remember
how the lambs frolicked and butted each other
in the sheepfold.
Remember
how people were warned off coming home
when the well pole had been left up
and the bucket had been lowered into the well…
Remember. Remember. Remember…
The skinny desert dog is thirsty all the time.
The riverbed is dry.
Only on the back of my hand
is there still
a damp salty trace of tears.
Ly Seppel is an Estonian poet and translator as well as a psychotherapist. Her latest publication in English translation (together with her husband Andres Ehin) is Shortening the Candle’s Wick (Carcanet, 2018).
Ilmar Lehtpere is an Estonian poet and translator. His most recent translations into English are On the Edge of a Sword by Kristiina Ehin (Arc, 2018), and Shortening the Candle’s Wick by Andres Ehin and Ly Seppel (Carcanet, 2018).
Kristine Doll is a poet and translator whose work has been published internationally. “My Friends” from her first collection Speak to Me Again was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry. Doll’s translations include poetry and memoir in Catalan, English and Spanish. She is professor of World Languages and Cultures at Salem State University, Salem, MA, USA.