Helsinki

I stumbled through the snow, down Mannerheimintie,
Past the Rautatieasema rail station, hobbling through the snow,
On two badly injured knees, reaching the line up
For the Picasso exhibit at the Ateneumin Taidemuseo.
I had just arrived in Helsinki that morning:
A ten hour journey on little sleep and an extensive hangover.
I waited in line, accepting the cold and ignoring the pain in my legs.
Once inside, I paid the admission and meandered through the rooms.
Picasso once said: ”Give me a museum, and I’ll fill it.”
He didn’t lie. The gallery had his paintings, sculputres and even some sketches.
I spent an hour canvassing the rooms and taking in the mastery.
I understood little about the art, but enjoyed myself nonetheless.
I branched off and found the Finnish wing of the gallery:
The real reason I had come.
A lot of landscapes, but also many bleak portraits.
There’s a sadness here, but a beauty too.
I entered a room in the north end of the building.
A large canvas, perhaps six feet by six feet, engulfed a wall:
Berndt Lindholm’s ”The Forest.”
I stood for twenty minutes, perhaps, totally overcome with its majesty.
The painting depicted a regular forest scene: rotted logs, titanic roots,
Scattered mosses, and general debris strewn throughout.
The attention to detail overwhelmed me.
The art slowly pulled me from the gallery as I stood transfixed, lost:
A satori in Helsinki.
A small tour group entered the room and my trance evaporated
As suddenly as it had come.
I carried on through the gallery thinking only of Lindholm’s work.
His art proved to me that man could play God in this curious world.
I walked onward, lost in the splendours that only beauty invokes.
Then, in the last room, the whole charade fell apart and the world returned.
I saw it in the corner, a small frame, feigning innocence:
Eero Järnefelt’s “The Wage Slaves.”
It portrayed a slash and burn agricultural approach used by the Forest Finns,
A clan of people who wandered from Finland to Sweden and Norway
Taking the forest down with them as they went.
A young girl stands in the middle of the image,
Her face, black with soot, attracts the viewers gaze
As the devastation behind her is translated by her eyes.
I grabbed my jacket and toque from the coat check
And left the gallery, thinking only of
The ways in which man can be God in this curious world.