Scene 1:
Fragments of summer -
thin filling in a snow-white wedding cake.
Against warm Helsinki bricks,
eyes closed, savoured, tasty summer -
long Bulevardi nights and beer.
After midnight sunset-sunrise shadows
green the sky and rooftops of the
old, brave new world, palaces
that now are banks and will be grey
whichever way the wind blows.
Shadows, inseminated by the
secret language ...
Shadows, caught in summer,
saved, pressed between the pages
of a book, imprinted with the
secret language
and the sun
[The camera shots owe much to Eisenstein]
Shadows split asunder
by a wind that whispers, "winter."
Scene 3:
Scene 8:
Last Revised: October 2000
Scene 2:
Wrapping her cool aloneness
in her mother's gift of silence
and fastened at the waist
by her father's firmer hand;
Raija enters from the left.
[The cast shall come in quietly.]
In autumn pause, turned collar,
kicked leaves and rain,
she checks the number on the door,
she moves again -
'home' is too hard a word.
Outside of pain, outside of grace,
the smile is reflex and the timing wrong.
[The director sees this
awkwardness as charm.]
She smiles again - lets the smile flutter
to the rain-slicked cobbles at her feet,
where [close-up now] he bends,
removes his gloves
and places it , so softly,
limp upon his palm.
And he? [Dissolve in flashback.]
He, from fusty schools
where all is drawn in lines...
From fusty folk
("My country ‘tis for thee.")
Who parted his ideas (and hair), just so,
upon the right - from these broke free,
(Said more clearly - he was swept away.)
And panicked young, ran amok through marriage,
spat on blood-soaked sheets,
ripped hearts from sparrows and feasted
on the flowers torn from other people's gardens.
(Ok, the truth - stole the flowers, who, much later,
left and married bankers.)
Finally he flung the blotted copybook
behind and grew his dreams
in rented plots of sand -
until the tide came in.
[Cut! Rewind and dissolve...]
Scene 4:
Then meeting.
He takes her now - sweet sister
of the agonies -
takes her in this cell
(a bedroom in a cheap motel)
and finds her with her eyelids closed;
nailed to infinity.
He calls the landlord,
spits and turns away.
Says her name and,
with no effort,
takes the crowbar from the floor,
pries free those eyes and wraps
the wounds in sugar from a jar.
It will be all right (he says) though
paler as he nails his fingers
to her head.
[Cut, print and now...]
No tricks! (She screams)
No motels! (He replies)
and, having screamed, they sit
(fresh eyelids coming up,
room service from below)
and trade their tired old histories
for concessions on the bed.
Scene 5
The director speaks -
she doesn't hear.
The reality of scenes she knows -
of dreams, of sets, of moves,
confused by light and shade and fear
(that is no new numbness)
spreading - blankets her from everything...
Except the cold.
For, once again, it's come to this -
more rented dreams (more sticky-sheet motel)
and unpaid dues.
Though still it moves her as he draws
from old sullied poems, the lines
he thinks will win her, break her,
make her trip and fall, into what
(in decent times) they once called "love" -
a china doll in fragments on the floor.
[Pull back that shot.]
The flash of light -
sucked moisture from her eyes -
now rests upon his lips.
Saliva from her tongue (or his)
and darkness (the longest drink they serve is black)
resists the dry throat call of morning,
curtained away behind autumn clouds,
but waiting for the time when it can freeze.
Scene: 6.
They rise amidst the fall
of leaves and snow and
wind creaked rusted summer hinges,
to feast on cold marble tables,
cracked beneath the weight
of waiting for each other.
They walk, in country mud and orchards,
in railway halls and market squares.
Vodka drunk against the wind,
behind Helsinki's Turkish tombs,
they dance old dreams to sleep,
(but not to death, not yet...)
Until they falter, out of step and breath
and words, beneath the last birch branch
with leaves in all this bare and windswept park.
For, having met
and having done this all
so many times before,
(no rental movie now, but real)
she knows that somewhere wait
the long snow ridges, frost and ice,
she saw, while still first shaking hands.
She saw (and didn't feel a thing)
a lake with wind and ice
and hoods and fur
and parting thus:
frozen to each other,
staying till the last,
for warmth and not for friendship -
for body heat and not for love.
Scene 7:
[Cut! Listen, close! Before more shots are called,
let's change the script and edit out that scene -
rewrite those lines and call the actors out.
into the cold for one last take.]
[I'm sorry sir, your time is up.]
The cold has come,
her frozen body found
and here...
a single glove.
It comes to this from melody -
sweet harmony,
in shattered notes upon the ice.
The gloveless hand was meant to be...
placed upon his wrist - the scripts said so.
It indicated tenderness - the director said.
The police just thought it strange.
But she must have known we'd come to see her solo,
they agreed, as amidst the Polaroids and smoke
and wonder, they waited for the meatvan
and the pick.
[I'm sorry sir. Your time is up.
Come easy now -
identify these flowers
you bruised and cast aside last spring.]
The brittle frosted china bride,
her pieces glued together,
at the heart of this last set
(a vast white wedding cake)
spins slow, and certain now -
within the wind's embrace -
that he'll not leave (the penetrations deep)
- he'll not refuse her either -
her cold unfailing lover.
Icing forms around the doll.
Cold, rising slow between her legs,
changes now to dream like warmth and
(one bare hand beckoning)
she standing sleeps
with real smile -
for first and last time, satisfied.
[Don't touch a thing, the Inspector said.
Too late for the director, who put first
frozen fingers on his wrist
then frozen smile
upon his lips.]
Scene 9:
The director was released (no blame)
and now without a script, he dreams...
That Raija lives (an island cottage on the lake)
where she can walk on water,
in winter she will skate.
This Raija lives - In spring see flowers
(memories rising through old snow)
amidst young silver birch (a woman),
silver birch (an island) and silver birch...
Blue woodsmoke drifts on home
to this lady of his or any island
and continues to infinity
(no longer home for nailed eyes)
with place, island, tree and woman -
endless circling smoke through future seasons.
And so she stands,
feeling always... wind off the lake,
which brings frozen mist to eyebrows
aglow with warmth.
Her fur hood tossed back and damn the cold,
hair spun silver floating frost in moonlight -
reflecting light and dark in bark
of silver birch.
And standing by her side
is the wind off the lake
his eyes are green, I've heard)
blowing warm.
[All this I gathered by piecing together
scraps from the editing room floor.]
Sandy's Homepage, novels and other poems
