THE RACES

A soldier marches from Munich to Stalingrad.
In the first division's first company's first platoon.
And his death, riding in a Tiger tank,
Already shadowed him in Minsk, in the narrow streets,
And said: – Heil Hitler! Gute Nacht, brave soldier...

The merchant scurries from London to Calcutta.
It's a deal: 10,000 pounds pure profit.
And his death, astride a pale-yellow camel, waits since evening
At Marsa Matruk with a dagger pressed in his cold hands.

A villager from Plunge crosses the ocean to Maine's farms
To get farther away from death, I see, –
But his death meets him on a tractor, plowing the potato fields
And humming "Jingle Bells," and calls out: – Hello, good boy!
   How're you?...

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE

A man spoke in the street
By my window once.
And his word was the word
Commedia dell'arte.

Life is heavy, weighs 100 tons.
Heavy as a sailor's laugh – ha, ha, ha!
Heavy and great as, from the VIth Station,
The scarf of Saint Veronica.

Some die gracefully,
Some croak too soon like dogs
Without bought exequies or God...
Missa est.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


THE WORLD'S GOD

(Prayer to a Tree in the United Nations' Meditation Chapel)

If you were water
Clear as crystal, flowing –
The world would say to Nero:
			    Villain, wash
Your hands, stained with the blood of slaughtered millions!

If you were stone
Carried by hands uncounted thousands of miles –
You would be tied around the neck of Genghis Kahn
And he would drown, like an old dog that has chewed up packs of
   other dogs,
In the Pacific Ocean, near the Bikini Islands,
Under the hydrogen bomb!

If you were...
If you were Jehovah, great and cruel,
If you were Buddha, cross-legged and blessing his own peace, Buddha!
If you were Mammon, governing nations,
If you were Christ, carrying the mustard seed of faith...

If you were a living tree!... Growing and rustling...
If you were an oak from Lithuanian fields –
Around you would blossom the meadows of the earthly paradise
And thousands of children would frolic in freedom...

Oh, old tree stump,
Are you indeed the God of all mankind?

Translated by Jonas Zdanys


IMAGE OF THE FUTURE

Like a moss-bee, as evening wanes,
our life will take flight back to the hive, the song
already fallen still, the white frost still and fallen.
Like God'sd thoughts, we shall gather at the threshold.

On gray moss in a pine wood, her heart turned gray,
youth tearful for her prayers astray will find redress in heaven.
And you, beloved, in one night perhaps grown gray with me,
blossoms of peony no longer in your cheeks...

Thus we shall see ourselves in distant firelight,
and for ourselves, from shadows, raise the ruined ancestral home.
Till the sun gutters, flowers the sphere, the ring gold as a grape
and we shall see our first love, veiled in white, walk past us.

Potentates will bestow their wealth and palaces,
and queens, their emeralds and pearls.
In your name, Jesus, in the pastoral game of death,
our sweetest shield, our paradisal consolation.

And priests and sisters, walled in their cold stone,
and noble hierarchs and low-born servants
wandered from moonlight into moonlight,
O Lord, and have not found the path to your domain.

Towards it, the echo ever by our side, through fields,
towards it, one dry juniper needle in our hands,
bare-headed and without adornments, we shall travel
along the ice-locked way of All Souls' Day.

The rivulet of mystery will burst out of the mountain.
Our souls will bow down, tired, drink their fill, recover,
more azure than the opal of the rainbow
garlanded in the holy herbs of the high feast.

Forget man's vain preoccupations, his wish to forget,
his promises to you, earth, not to die – and many, oh many dreams!
For darkness falls, the ship appears already and the waves
crash, as without rest I draw near our Father's haven.

Translated by Clark Mills


JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

My sister told me, "You are not my brother."
My brother told me, "You are not my brother."
Where can I find a sister – where, a brother,
Who am, to sister and to brother, alien?

High up the Alps, deep-chasmed in the snows,
St.Bernard's chapel hunches, hoar with years.
A cold and lonely toller nods beside the bell
And, sleeping, dreams and angel, lowering, awoke him.

He walks now, searching for me – downhill: through night
And day, through wind and snowdrift, thaws and freezing.
He seems to brush my brow – his good soft hand upon me;
He seems to touch my face – my heart he quickens.

Here below, my heart will sleep. Above, awaken. Its sun obscured,
Its beating stilled, this heart had verged on death.
Through fog – a tale: all, all is a trek through fog. And life itself
Ascends through fog – a journey into night.

Translated by Demie Jonaitis


OUR PRAYERS

All our thoughts and all our hopes still swarm
Round our homes, the country of our birth.
Numb with cold, we go there to get warm
From the furthest corners of the earth.

We repeat in every daily prayer:
"Give us, Lord, a patch of homeland's skies..."
After all the wanderings it's there
That our weary spirits will arise.

Translated by Lionginas Pažūsis

Bernardas Brazdžionis is considered by many to be the patriarch of Lithuanian émigré poetry. In fact, knowledge of Brazdzionis' poetry can be taken as a litmus test for one's degree of patriotism. Born in the village of Stebeikeliai in northeastern Lithuania, Brazdžionis left Lithuania with his parents, living temporarily in the United States until 1914. After his return to Lithuania, Brazdžionis completed his secondary and higher education, studying Lithuanian Literature and Linguistics. After graduating from the Lithuanian State University in Kaunas he worked as an editor of a number of literary publications. He was also curator of the Maironis Museum of Literature. Brazdžionis began publishing poetry while still a high school student; later, as an University student, Brazdžionis's poetry became increasingly popular. Brazdžionis was forced to flee Lithuania during the Second World War and eventually resettled in the United States in 1949, where he actively participated in Lithuanian émigré life publishing many volumes of poetry, as well as books for children. He was also an editor of the magazine Lithuanian Days in Los Angeles. Brazdžionis' poetry, written in exile, dealt with themes of loyalty and love for the motherland, and often was set to music and sung at patriotic gatherings. Brazdžionis is a distinctly Catholic poet, and often his poetry takes on a mystic character. Brazdžionis has published ten books of poetry, five of which were published by the Lithuanian émigré press abroad.