Uuno Kailas(1901-1933)
I bring my love onto your path
like a firefly in the night.
I place in your hands a precious jewel,
throw it in the sea,
so that it wouldn't dim in the morning.
Your mouth is full of sea's breathing
and the murmuring of children.
Your words are full of awakening.
In the heavens of your eyes
new stars are born this night.
My heart knows them,
and my whole life
escapes from me and kneels
to pray to those stars,
and my heart gives them blissful names.
(Laulu sinulle; Purjehtijat, 1925, pages 29-30.)
Uuno Kailas was a Finnish poet, politically a rightwing extremist, whose tortured homosexuality drove him into alcoholism and mental decline, leading to schizophrenia. Intoxicated, he often believed that Satan itself made visits to debate him. Kailas died of tuberculosis, execerbated by his alcoholism, in France. His love poetry was presented to his contemporaries as heterosexual. Kailas had an affair with a fellow poet Kaarlo Sarkia(1902-45), who also suffered from tuberculosis and alcoholism. The two of them are considered among the very best Finnish poets of their time, although their poetry was already dated compared to the poetry being written in Swedish in Finland by their contemporaries, the Swedish-language poets in Finland being more connected with European and international developments in poetry and more open to experiments. In Finnish-language poetry the big breakthrough to modernism came only in 1956, although an early attempt had been made by Kailas' fellow rightwinger Aaro Hellaakoski(1893-1952), but that attempt had ended in a complete critical defeat and Hellaakoski's withdrawal to writing traditional poetry of mediocre merit - which was received better.
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