***[i'm a singing skeleton] Poem by Jürgen Rooste

i'm a singing skeleton
i'm the ghastly-ghostly
master of the full-moon night

and i stand at dusk
compelled, a must
in the shadows before your open window

you think you're seeing
a nasty dream
but actually

that nasty dream is
seeing
you

it peers at you from between the curtains
a glint of passion haunting
its empty eye sockets

its skull satiatingly spherical

rising from its bony windpipes comes
a spurned
love-purr

i'm a singing skeleton
an abhorrent watchman of spirits
cloaked in your silk curtains in the darkness


but today, i am called
LOVE
and there's no other name to be found

Translated from Estonian by Adam Cullen