[Simtiem reižu sacīts: baidies miera.]

by Amanda Aizpuriete

Simtiem reižu sacīts: baidies miera.

Ilgi baidījusies, nu vairs nebaidos.

Attek migla – manu namu

Baltiem karodziņiem post.

Nāve papļāpāt ar mani nekautrējas.

Vienas cilts mēs esam,

Vienas dzejas,

Naktīs klausos tos, kas elpo tālu

Puķu, klusuma un drupu zemē.

[A hundred times it’s been said: fear peace.]

by Amanda Aizpuriete

A hundred times it’s been said: fear peace.

Long having feared, I no longer fear.

Fog flows in – my house

attacked by white flags.

Death is not shy of chattering to me.

We are of one tribe,

one poem.

Nightly I listen to those who breathe, distant,

in the land of flowers, silence and ruins.

translated from Latvian by Inara Cedrins

more>>

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

[Simtiem reižu sacīts: baidies miera.]

[A hundred times it’s been said: fear peace.]