OCEAN AND DROPLET

Ocean and droplet, like corn – ear and flower,
Breathe in fulfillment of one same behest:
Winter and summer it spins in the world
Whirlwind and slumber in woodland boughs.

Men and their doings – a weft immemorial...
Miracle pilots us, we are the oar – strokes...
Trembling of moments in trembling eternal...
Years are in flower, of bliss everlasting...

Mankind's brief hour is like to the wave...
Know you, o man, in the depths of the night,
Meeting with prayer the silence of stars.
Whose is the mouth with which you speak?

In brilliance of noon, where the hour of fulfillment
Opens the flowers in Golgotha's world.
Know you, o wand'rer, in labor and strife.
Whose is thought, not of earth, that you think?

Translated by W. Edward Brown


THE BELL

Loudly and sadly, one stroke on another,
Sang the bell to the slumbering world...
Just like the tocsin when fire is approaching,
Long and loudly it pealed.

Sang now with threats, with persuasive endearment, –
Trembling, it sobbed, with a bitter complaint –
Thunder pursuing, or story from childhood –
Into the silent darkness it fell.

Promise it hinted of man's resurrection,
Sounded the sorrowful tidings of death, –
Wilderness fervor cried out in darkness, –
Thirst for forgiveness, revenge...

Sang in the night, and the holiday morning,
Laughed with the storm, and in silence it wept;
Only an echo sang back from the forest –
Not from the slumbering soul.

Just like the tocsin when fire is approaching
Sang the bell to a world without heed...
Loudly and sadly, one stroke on another,
Vainly it pealed about God.

Translated by W. Edward Brown


LITTLE DAISY

Little daisy, white as snow,
To delight me as I tread,
From the roadside dust you grow,
Lifting up your pretty head.

Under sorrow's weight I groaned;
Your sweet flower healed my sore.
In the world I'm not alone, 
Not an orphan any more.

Poverty seems to be gone,
Gone the pain, and life seems worth
Living – not like exile on
This dark, melancholy earth.

With sunshine you filled my heart,
And I walk along, made bold
By the song bereft of art
You left singing in my soul.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


THE SONG OF THE TUMBLEDOWN HOUSE

A tumbledown old house I know –
Beside its doorstep burdocks grow;
Its narrow windows seem to wince 
As if it grieves and weeps long since,
As if it were already tired
Of earthly, beggarly attire.

A cross and well-pole lean outside;
The fence is almost nullified;
Caved in and crooked, poorly thatched,
The roof still hangs, repaired and patched,
The straw upon it sticking out,
Quite often torn by storms, no doubt.

Where noisy feet at balls once leapt
The floor now creaks, unwashed, unswept.
Where youthful joy once sang, divine,
Dry willows, bent, the pathway line.
The yard's in a neglected state;
Long since no dog barks at the gate.

The housewife doesn't hear a thing,
Though once she'd made young heartstrings ring.
The leaves on garden trees scarce shake,
So the tired widow shouldn't wake
And not be parted with her wealth –
Her sleep, her dreams of youth and health.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


THE WANDERER'S HARP

I have been roaming on for days and days.
Ensnared in days, I wander on and on,
Whole days along my destined roads and ways,
As long as I am able, till I'm gone.

In morning's garden I found flowers sweet;
I trampled many of them as I went,
Yet briars – even more of them I met.
My gains were small, compared with what I spent.

It dawned on me through agony and fears
How blind it is, the universal mind;
Though all night long I listen to the stars
No harmony among them do I find.

Ah man, it is not given you to see
What lasts an hour, and what goes on for aye;
And where you, too, a droplet in a sea,
Are sent to quail, and wherefrom do you hail...

And so with drooping heart and downcast head
Prostrate, I wait and wait, all gloom despite,
For somebody to offer me his aid
To solve the riddle set by dark and light.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


SEEING OFF A STORK

The sun's hanging low in the sky,
All the woodland birds quieten now.
They gather in flocks and fly
From the woods, now more spacious, somehow.

Brother stork, my visitor rare,
Both together we weathered our woes.
Now, my brother, alone you prepare
To travel – how far, God knows!

There gardens in autumn don't fade,
Skies shine in the sun's golden fire,
And here – only empty fields
And the falsehood of empty desire.

Mottled Autumn through stubble and straw
Lays its pathways all covered with mud.
I dream of your country, dear stork,
While the autumn wind chills my blood.

Ah, get ready, get ready, dear thing,
To catch up with the setting sun's beams!
The sun is for those who have wings,
While the lot of the wingless are dreams.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


TO THE FAVORITES OF VIOLENCE

Let the headsman's black axe sever
The thread of life the Highest spun;
Immortal thought it will not bring to ruin,
The spirit's life it may not take!

In time's delirium, smoking, scarlet
Before the Hour's Prince, time on time
The flow of blood has stained the Colosseum.
That for the ages Love might flower.

Such is the law for aye unbroken
In all that life has brought to pass:
On earth the right is with the persecuted,
The judge is always put to shame.

Kingdoms have guttered, and in quiet
Sleeps their might, their fleeting play;
But timeless gleams a morning – glow in darkness, –
The light that shines from Huss's pyre...

In stern malevolence, O hangman
Of spirit, revel in your toil;
But he who tries to crush the Word's wise babble,
Shall bring down lightnings on his head!

Translated by W. Edward Brown


RED SOUND

       "To All the Stepsons of the Native Land"

Transfiguration's light descends
Upon the fleeting hour and age, –
The seer's trance has been fulfilled,
And mighty anguish comes to pass!

The freeman's Plow, and not the dull
Yoke – slave of years now dead and gone,
Has turned the dark glebe's slumbrous clods, –
To heaven blooms the flower of earth.

The flame of life is unconfined!
Another bound, another step,
And the far distant Promised Land
Will be revealed without a bourn.

Ascending to the realm of space,
The strength of hands set free lifts up
The sun's face in the sun – bright cup
In shrine, whose light is circling stars.

Dispelled the gloom of life oppressed,
She, crucified in days gone by,
Rus', at this Easter Morning – song,
Chants loud her universal psalm!

Translated by W. Edward Brown


TESTAMENT OF GRIEF

When pain assails your heart to tear it,
Your naked heart, its helpless prey,
Receive the gift of grief and bear it,
Soul of my dark departing day.

When times of torment strike unbidden,
With weeping eyes, through pain and stress,
You peer at mistery, dimly hidden:
God's ways are ways of deep distress...

We take the tasks that life enforces,
Grope to light its drabness bars
And raise the load of mundane courses
Up to the festival of stars.

And he, and only he, can sever
His ties with dust in throes of birth
Who loves the crown of thorns, forever
Renouncing all he owned on earth.

Translated by Ants Oras


MORNING SONGS

I

The dawn has caught fire ere the coming of day!
Night calls back her shadows to the ravines,
And in a pearly throng, in girdles of fire,
The caravans of the clouds depart...

Space is laid bare amid dewy valleys,
Distances have been moved aside into infinity, –
As though from God's heights, from deeps forbidden,
All the veils have fallen over all the world...

The bay has been aroused, the wave is growing,
It has thundered in wild fury,
And the stillness has been shattered like a resonant vessel,
In the great triumph of morning...

II

Great hour! The radiant dawn
Has spread her hundred – hued fan in the east,
And flocks of birds, soaring in the splendor,
Seem to be splashing in a living stream...

And sound after sound, quivering in the stillness,
Over forest, over river, over the fat cornfield,
Strives toward the heavens, that grow blue in fire,
Laughs and calls from the soundless depths...

Into earth's dewy circle, opening cuplike,
Like foaming wine, the sultry day is poured,
And every hill is a step toward holiday,
And every moment a promise that life's gladness is ours!

III

Hark! It is light! The twilight melts,
The earth is laid bare...
The lovely day, God's festival,
Is poured out on the sleepy fields...

Abundantly and all – powerfully
It spatters with the gold of its rays, –
In the misty world like a bright hymn
It breathes more widely, more ardently...

Opening, dispersing
The rows of clouds,
It is green, it is blue
With a sea of flax and corn – flowers...

With free song, bell song,
Day works the miracle of life,
In space, like the sea,
It glitters, sparkles, burns!

IV

               To S. A. Poliakov

The waves of dawn rock the boat –
   Living praise to being!
The measureless distances are in nuptial fire,
   And sun and sea – in me...
Over the azure depth that knows no bottom,
   I am myself a wandering wave...
I feast, I whirl at the feast of light,
   Like a spark in a living fire...
Before the miracle of the flashing of immortal lightnings
   I fall down, mortal, –
Between me and the universe, at the hour of fullness,
   There has come to be no dividing line...
The world is a silent foaming in the thinning dusk,
   I am a flame of prayer in a psalm...
The rays play, shatter, upon the mast, –
   My sail is of bright brocade!
With a prayerful sound, like an unearthy choir,
   Wave flashes behind wave...
And each sings a quiet tale,
   That the heart of man is a – bloom!

Translated by W. Edward Brown


TO THE CRUCIFIED HOMELAND

An orphan's fate, to stray and stumble
On ways of blood and fire, is thine...
Yet in your wordless grief, my humble,
Believing heart, await the Sign...

Hail beats the crop, stark lightnings cleave it,
The ancient shields are sighs and groans,
Yet He who built this land, believe it,
Makes wine of tears and bread of stones.

You labor painfully and slowly
Through fruitless days of blight and sleet,
Yet trust and deem divine the lowly,
Mute stigmata of bleeding feet.

And though the pain seem daily greater
And blessing bitter from above,
Lift up the mind to the Creator
For the last victory of love.

Translated by Ants Oras


THE SURF

The day's wild ocean sings and thunders,
And beats against the fatal shore,
This breaker with dumb sorrow sunders,
And these like laughing victors roar,
Their sheen – one joy of vernal wonders,
Their sheen – vast winter's shining hoar.

In wrath triumphant forward swinging,
The lifted billow calls and fails,
A joyous giant shouting, singing,
Its voice the voice of sounding gales,
Its glory in the sunlight flinging,
Whose noonday glow it holds and hails.

Across the sea, now lightly foaming,
Another rears, that stirs the deep,
And floods the shore with the silence gloaming;
Morose and slow it seems to creep
Like one who drops, worn out with roaming,
From his bent back a fatal heap.

Each moment new, with changing power,
The surf is thundering alone.
Now idle, now it seems to lower,
Hymning a sylence all unknown,
Like a dark heart asleep, – for hour
On hour in restless monotone.

Translated by Ants Oras


CAMOMILE

Camomile, you mite of whiteness,
To refresh the road I've taken,
Rising from the dust, you stand there,
With your glowing head uplifted...

For a poor man trekking stubbles,
Such a blossom's full of riches –
Now I'm not alone, that's certain –
In earth's void, I'm not forsaken...

Cured the ills of nagging hardship,
Quiet now the pain of longing,
Vanished from my breast the exile's
Terror of earth crucifixion...

Since you've brimmed the sun's own chalice,
Darkling, I stride on more surely,
While my heart in silence reckons
What you're singing to my spirit...

Translated by Demie Jonaitis


TO THE MINSTREL

Not for a flash of flame – your zither, brother!
Its charm is charged to praise the macrocosm
Where ages gather, in one enigmatic circle,
Remoteness of existence with earth's clay...

You've praised the rose, you'll praise the withered grasses
For he who scans the leaf but sees the tree,
Himself a drop, recourses to the whirlpool –
Reaching, in a flash, eternity's remoteness...

Enchanter, sing to those in life's alliance
Who, to grasp a flashing moment dimly,
Disavow the magic wealth of ages –

Proclaim earth's will, unbroken by disaster,
The long night's restless dream of sun-borne tidings –
Already comes the cockcrow – it's dawning, dawning!

Translated by Demie Jonaitis


THE RUSTLING OF HAIR-GRASS

Greet the tender grassblades by your path, and listen
While the clay-sprung grass that's fine as hair will whisper,
Whisper to your heart, which seems so hard of hearing,
"You and I, to time eternity, are equal..."

For Almighty Father God has so arranged that,
Since you both accepted as your destination
Modest earth, you're halves of an equation: riddles
Both: in bloom and ashes, comparable miracles...

Catch this living knowledge, let your eyes be opened,
And from then on you will draw your dwindling moment
From forever – and not have to split the empire
Of the world to muddy earth and starry heaven...

Translated by Theodore Melnechuk

Born into a peasant family in the village of Paantvardžiai, Jurgis Baltrušaitis went to secondary school in Kaunas and from 1893 to 1899 studied mathematics and history at Moscow University. Together with S. Polyakov he founded the Scorpion publishing house in 1899. From 1920 to 1939 Baltrušaitis was the ambassador of Lithuania to the USSR. In 1939 he was transferred to a diplomatic post in France and was in Paris when World War II began. His first poems written in Russian were published in 1899. Baltrušaitis published two books of verse in Russian, continuing the philosophical tradition of Russian Symbolist lyrics. His first poem in Lithuanian was published in 1927. It was especially notable for its concentrated thought, restrained lyricism and combination of Symbolist poetics with old Lithuanian rural vocabulary.