Like a nameless source below the cathedral,

like a spray of light within the pall of fog,

open yourself, and come to life once more.

Water your heart with no remorse.

 

Try to be like the sky – cold and blue,

or gaze at the gulls above the Neris as if

through an arrow-slit in the castle wall,

but only when their wings are full of wind for you.

 

Groan like the brash ice, or hiss like the slush

that melts in the flow of the street –

for this is the voice, returning to the sun,

the one you took from a nameless source.

translated from Lithuanian by Rimas Uzgiris

1. Nike

 

Lemon rinds,

            the taste of cinnamon,

            wine from the Balkans, drunk.

O morning – so clean,

            belonging not to God,

            nor people, nor the devil,

in such an empty apartment,

            in heated tin and glare of glass,

in a white

circle –

            in the madness of June’s sun –

            I lie like a cross, and tears are for naught.

For these broken, battered wings –

            this dust shining above the street,

for my naked, wincing shoulders in the light,

            I hate you –

            but open my mouth

to your ghastly purple gale…

 

 

2. Red Tunic

 

A woman with a red tunic

            in the plazas of the world,

a woman by a microphone –

            anguish augments her voice,

wandering among the landless crowds,

            pale and petite,

splashed by a breaking wave,

            stormy, salty and bright…

She sings.

            Ears stuffed with wax

            – the night’s black un-ravellers

can’t hear.

            Greece – a vast concentration camp.

            You had to leave,

tying yourself to the mast…

            The weapons of the vanquished rust:

stacks of shields, spears and helms.

            The Sirens’ hands – bound and bloodstained.

 

 

3. Witch

 

The midday square – stifling and loud.

            (Movie theaters – empty.)

They swarm. And a fierce, subhuman curiosity

            unites thousands.

A pillar of shame grows above houses

            like a strange, desiccated tree.

And my gaze is full of pride –

            delirious and dying.

(The typhus wards, saunas, gulag

            barbers are packed.

Cut hair lies in red bands.)

            And anger flows –

incomprehensible,

            as if I were born on a different planet.

And raving voices throb –

            hoarse from dull pleasure.

A heavy chain chafes my neck.

            The hangman grows bored.

(He tosses empty bottles under the table

            with a mad crash.)

Truth – from my childish mouth,

            wild, untouched.

Light it. My body longs

            for a cleansing flame. 

translated from Lithuanian by Rimas Uzgiris

I am two in one. One lives a long life in honor

of another and counts the stars for him until dawn.

I am two in one. One forged to the other forever,

if forever will allow Russian cubits to be its measure.

 

An enemy and a friend in one. And sometimes two enemies

who challenge one another to old-fashioned duels. And it turns out

that both get away with wounds and are left on the ground

riddled with bullets, until they lick the blood from themselves with a song.

 

And again a black cat may spring up or a frog,

we’ll stay, unintentionally, two in one from now on.

We know the double-hatred will not divide us,

that two-as-one are beating on the gate to heaven.

 

I am two in one. One dreams for the other. Let us free

our two-ness peacefully from the bars. And drink up

the summer sun to its last drop, let’s do that, as Socrates

drank all the way to the bitter end his poisoned cup.

translated from Yiddish by Maia Evrona

“Now, why is it that you never mention your Siberian father in this diary?”

A question came. And instead of an answer, just see:

Before my eyes his skin has grown over mine,

and his beard has ripened on me, before my eyes.

 

Now your son has wholly become that reclusive being—his father,

with his fingers I roll soft tobacco in cigarette paper,

the night sits on a sparkling polishing wheel, rose colored and pure.

Where did I learn page after page of Gemora by heart?

 

Where did I learn to play the violin? With his fingers, I play

on otherworldly strings with the memory of the Garden of Eden.

Filled with sparkling ice, whose is this shovel?

With his big-boned fingers I’m playing his fiddle.

 

We exist eternally in the same mass,

the old snow has young strength, both to be covered in snow,

no guns nor artillery can separate us now.

*

“Now, why is it that you never mention your Siberian father in the diary?”

translated from Yiddish by Maia Evrona

Gone the window and through it the poor Sabbath guest, the cherry tree,

who came to stay the night with me along its journey.

Gone the cherry tree made of stars, they have all been stolen

by cosmic thieves.

 

This drilled hole has only left me as a vestige

a token amount of heavenly air, which had come in through that window,

brilliant

and four-sided.

 

That token of heavenly air, which had drifted in through that window

has been stolen by no one, nor shot to pieces.

The vision of my life owns a spacious home

inside four slender, slender lines.

 

And the greatest wonder of all: the cherry tree drifts in

to spend the night with me as it did then, that guest,

and the cherry tree made of stars, too, finds its way inside

through those same sweet slender, slender lines.

translated from Yiddish by Maia Evrona