SENSE

With words that sway in the wind –  
like a tree rocking the night in its branches –  
life, I would hold you in my arms, 
asking – who are you?

With words that call, call in vain, 
with those that caress, those that question, 
and above all those that ask:  
– What's the sense?

The night mocks me with the chirping of crickets, 
touches my eyes with cool fingers of stars, 
overpowers me and my outcry. 
And the sense? You utter the word, 
and it shuts itself up like a clam.

Sinking into the silence, 
I repeat to myself:  
– It's better not to ask. 
Remember Eve? The apple, the serpent? 
Eve didn't ask. She never asks –  
nor does she ever listen.



YOUR SOUL

When you died, 
for several days the very depth of my eyes 
was haunted by a dove, 
white, restless, easily frightened. 
No sooner did I catch a glimpse of it, 
than it took wing, fluttered away, 
and disappeared into the grayish twilight. 
But my heart knew: It's you. Your soul.

And it was good – that sad yet radiant knowledge. 
Autumn can be at times like that: 
the quiet light, transformed to wisdom, 
holds up to earth a sky wide open, 
just like a mirror. And you can see the most minute 
bud of emotion, quivering in your soul. 
All is so clear it hurts: 
the sky, the earth 
and you yourself, lost in between, 
yes, even death.

What you were I know and never shall forget: 
A dove. White, easily frightened.



WHAT ANY HUMAN NEEDS

How little any human needs!
Maybe a small shack to live in, among the grasses and trees,
With pale tiny clouds grazing like a pair of young oxen above the chimney,
And a breeze scattering sand like a child at play in the yard.
While inside, on the bare table-planks, to have
bread patiently waiting, along with fragrant milk.
Also good would be to have
right near here, just past wading on down the meadow,
the calm stretch of cove, with a rowboat swaying,
that has a green pike stalking the reeds,
which the local songbird isn't the least bit scared of.
Perched on a swaying stalk, the small bird
keeps chattering, whistling to the sunset;
with the latter in the full glory of its various colors –
raspberry, violet, orange, even some gold –
stretched on its back to float on top of the lake.
What is especially necessary
on coming home
from a long journey, from fishing, from work,
is having eyes there to meet your eyes,
one voice greeting another,
and on going to sleep at night
a warm cheek you could touch yours to.
How little any human needs!

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



SPRING'S DELAY

These are no letters, merely
some notes you'd jot down for yourself,
being stuck under the doors.
These are the knots tied into the corner of a handkerchief,
readings derived from the flight of a bird,
or from the way a snowflake melts
on your lashes, dissolving
faster than yesterday did.
So now that they've smashed all their glass,
puddles take up breathing spring,
and over its morning span
the sun grows increasingly shriller,
like that train of remote days
I had the good luck to be late in catching.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



ON THE EVE

What a snarled quiet the year snuffs down on itself:
as if a book were holding its breath back,
an unfinished book about life!

Except for your eyes, my love,
I'll never be able to find such endless depths,
nor any sky with the same clarity.

For the silence,
which only last night swayed me in your loving,
I'll never find any key.

For the truth of you
I kiss the least trace:
the truth that is going to kill me.

Time stretches its fingers
to point out the street empty
again, without you,
as though you never went by my side.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



THE HUNTER

The silent forests
have the only, gently resounding
music I can abide:
torrential blue downpours wash away the footprints –
with leaves and more leaves, all copper, to cover them –
the scurrying footprints of shimmering Lady Luck.

Some envious children keep her on the run:
my hunting hounds.
I have hundreds of them,
all eager as arrows,
chasing her without once having had a glimpse of her,
eyes by the hundreds chasing her down, which can see
only beyond the horizon, hundreds of them, all under one name:
Desire.

And beyond the horizon,
in leaves grown still long ago, and still
running clear, drifting ever deeper into the woods,
is the torrent of her tracks.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



P S.

I live in the sign
called No.

I live right at the core of a word:
the word for Goodbye.

And when I die, I'll start to burn
as a mean, green star
in the Name of all the names there are.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis

Born at Kellomakki, a Finnish resort on the Baltic, Blekaitis reached Lithuania in his second year, when his family retreated from the encroaching turmoil of the October Revolution in the last year of World War I. His childhood in Kaunas was spent in a tri-lingual household, his father conversing in Lithuanian, his Polish mother reading and singing to him in Russian and teaching him to pray in Polish. He claimed he had taught himself to read by his studied reexamination of a Lithuanian map. He took up the study of literature at the University of Kaunas and after the outbreak of World War II made dramatic arts the focus of his studies in Vilnius, where he also began to work intensively as an actor and director. Near the end of the war he moved to Germany, where he stayed on to organize amateur drama groups and to stage plays for audiences of fellow refugees until 1949. He then emigrated to the United States and there continued his theater work, his dedication only slightly crimped by his having to earn an outside living. Beginning in 1952, he was engaged to produce radio broadcasts for Voice of America and moved to Washington two years later to assume a staff position with the same service, which he held until his retirement in 1987. Blekaitis published two books of verse in his lifetime, and they would stand out if only by the near-total avoidance of the elegiac pastoral traps even the best of his contemporaries would typically revert to. His refined aestheticism contrives to invigorate passing ephemera to which the poet, in observing the true scale of his art, stakes no further claim.