Bevardė versmė

by Judita Vaičiūnaitė

Lyg bevardė versmė po katedra,

lyg iš rūko šviesos čiurkšlė

prasiverk, atgaivink dar kartą

ir be gailesčio širdį užliek.

Lyg dangus būk – šaltas ir žydras

lyg iš lango angos pily

dar išvysk virš Neries žuvėdras,

kai sparnai tau vėjų pilni.

Lyg ledonešis gausk, lyg ižas

atitirpusių gatvių tėkmėj,

nes tą balsą, į saulę grįžusi,

iš bevardės versmės ėmei.

A Nameless Source

by Judita Vaičiūnaitė

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

From Crystal: Selected Poems, forthcoming in 2017 from Pica Pica Press: http://www.picapica.press/books

Judita Vaičiūnaitė (1937, Kaunas-2001, Vilnius) was one of Lithuania’s leading poets of the second half of the twentieth century. She graduated Vilnius University in 1959, and spent most of her life in Vilnius. She published over twenty books of poetry, as well as translations of poetry, poetry books for children, and plays. She worked as an editor for several leading literary journals in Lithuania. Her poetry has been translated into English, German, Russian and other languages. Her work has garnered numerous prizes, including the Lithuanian Writer’s Union Prize in 2000, and the national award of the Gediminas Cross in 1997.

Rimas Uzgiris is a poet, translator, editor and critic. His work has appeared in Barrow Street, AGNI, Atlanta Review, Iowa Review, Quiddity, Per Contra, Hudson Review and other journals. He is translation editor and primary translator of How the Earth Carries Us: New Lithuanian Poets (Vilnius, 2015). His translations of Ilzė Butkutė and Judita Vaičiūnaitė are forthcoming from US publishers. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers-Newark University. Recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Grant and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship, he teaches literature, translation and creative writing at Vilnius University.