A child is a house that parents inhabit.
How clear the small objects,
how the toys excite one's pity, little clothes
helter-skelter on the floor, on the chair-back, on the table corner,
and a small stone placed on the window sill to grow,
frosts of seven winters inside the stone,
grandfather carried in his pocket
the weight of seven generations, the smooth, light stone.
The house builds inside it another house,
corridors, secret rooms, chambers, and cellar nooks,
rows of small secret closets, hidden guards
of little hatches. The house inside the house
builds inside it a labyrinth watched over by the Minotaur
to whom the child feeds its own fingers, its eyes,
its nose, its toes, its ears, its heels,
its little navel; the hurting growing aches
are fed to the Minotaur, the pains of dying.
Do not venture into any room as if it were your
without knocking.

Helena Sinervo



Helena Sinervo (born 1961) has published two collections of poetry.
Her first, Lukemattomiin was praised by the critics
and her second, Sininen Anglia was nominated for the Runeberg Prize.
Helena Sinervo also works as a critics, essayist and translator.
Music, a search for identity, and a Proustian flow of memory are the keys to her poetry.

Poems about Children

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