Where are you Seppo Vesterinen?

by Andrew Sclater

i.m. SV     ce n’est qu’un début — continuons le combat!
     (street slogan, Paris mai 68)

You came here from the other world,
    breathing risen mist from trees
and lakes I never knew, but felt, 
    beside you in these Paris streets,

mapped out for us by mapping cheats
    who narrowed them with their deceits—
So were we on this map at all?
    Sebastopol,

the boulevard of battle pain
    still runs into the rainfull Seine
and Austerlitz is plagued by trains
    rumbling in and out again.

From where and how did we come here
    to do our thing and then forget?
There was an altered atmosphere
    arising from a cigarette.

        Where are you, Seppo Vesterinen?

The ancient train groans on through grime,
    the station clocks now never chime,
the windows have gone black. This line is awfuller
    than what it was we knew. The whirr

and squeal of buckled wheel-rims grate
    on rails and, jerking, we accelerate
then screech into a siding to await
    the passing trains of ’68.

Each hangar by this line is grey.
    It is a dismal Russian scene.
It’s somewhere-we-have-never-been
    but also yesterday.

        Where are you, Seppo Vesterinen?

All aspects of this steppe are flat.
    There’s not a willow doesn’t lean.
I promise this is accurate,
    I do know what I mean.

You may have died. For all I know
    you may have spread your wings.
The canary that you bought still sings
    in stairways where I go—
    
But still the train with the chafing wheels
    sprays smuts across the Elysian fields,
and cobbles grunt at my steel-rimmed heels.
    I need the key to what’s concealed…

Come back, we’ll travel hand-in-hand
    across the sky of the Northern Land
and from such vantage understand
    how all we loved has since been banned...

        Where are you Seppo Vesterinen?