[Šonakt pelītes pa grīdu tekalēja,]

by Amanda Aizpuriete

Šonakt pelītes pa grīdu tekalēja,

Slazdu nebija. Bērni miegā smējās.

Mēness nespīdēja. Palma puķupodā šņāca –

Sapņoja par tuksnesi, bet lāgā nesanāca.

Šonakt nebij iemesla nekāda

Sadedzināt veco ādu.

Kāpēc rītam tāda gruzdum smaka?

Kāpēc tev ir jauna seja? Kāpēc taisnību

Neviens man nepasaka?

[Tonight mice scrabbled over the floor.]

by Amanda Aizpuriete

Tonight mice scrabbled over the floor.

There was no trap. Children laughed in their sleep.

The moon didn’t shine. The palm in its flowerpot snored –

dreamed of desert, but did not arrive at comprehension.

Tonight there was no reason

to burn old skin.

Why does morning have that smell of smouldering rubbish?

Why do you have a new face? Why isn’t truth

told me by anyone?

translated from Latvian by Inara Cedrins

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Amanda Aizpuriete was born in Jurmala in 1956 and studied philosophy and philology at the Latvian State University and at the M. Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. Nine books of her poetry have been published, including Ascension Street (1986), The Last Summer (1995), The Outskirts of Babel (1999), In Skies of Heather (2003), Windfall of Poems (2004), Twilight Loves You (2005), Tonight I Was A Green Bird (2012), There (3013) and a novel.

Inara Cedrins is American visual artist, writer, and translator. Her first anthology of contemporary Latvian poetry, featuring six poets in occupied Latvia and six in exile, was published by the University of Iowa Press; a new Baltic anthology was published by the University of New Orleans Press in 2013. Recent poems have appeared in Tabula Poetica, Denver Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Lumina, The Kenyon Review, Ellipsis, Spillway, Askew, and New Mexico Poetry Review.

Circumference

Poetry in Translation

[Šonakt pelītes pa grīdu tekalēja,]

[Tonight mice scrabbled over the floor.]