A STRANGER

Monuments push him out from squares
into tracks of glances
where his speech is queer like that of birds
bringing last messages
and his hair uncombed in a different way
to that of the hopeless drunkard yard-keeper
He might be judging us
in his bird-like speech
and rummages with his fingers
laundry and debt notes
hidden under the powerful history
– they say he is drawing a new world map
– where the border guards are looking 
and the sentries of our thoughts 
– how will he mark the big city
in his incomprehensible map
– his hands are for some reason immobile
and his glance passionate, but unweighing

We covered the traces of lost virginity
with all the blessings of the famous city
but the stranger would ache like a nail in the crowd
though it could have been already another one

Translated by Antanas Danielius


INVOCATION

… and the obedient words lay down
in the hospitable Procrustean bed

No crooked tree of imagination
rustled in lines through the night
the bird-villon did not build a nest
for a song on their railing
no girl from a dream
will change this timetable

Where are you saboteurs risking your life
aces of the vanishing victory
hush the fence, at least one of you
spat out with the tooth.

Translated by Antanas Danielius


MESSAGES FROM A SUBURB

It is not the fallen angel's rage
but that of a stuck tractor
Veins are trembling and the discharges
of overtense feeling are pouring out in lumps
Narrow is the grave of the body
and round the next sensation

there are suburbs, stations, faces to flee
from family
and holidays To avoid awakening the greater half
of one's life
a noble simplicity of everyday life – as said by a 
critic – 
is not rummaging in oneself: "discharges of
overtense feeling" –
a synthesis of the sun and the cross – as some
ethnologist would say
– one deifies nature but turns it into a cryptography

A twinkling lighting 
the approaching night 
(the road has not yet ended) 
Perhaps there is he who waits for us

Translated by Antanas Danielius


THE PRINCE'S EDUCATION

	Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me,
	you cannot play upon me. 
			      – Hamlet

And from then
and maybe even from earlier times
I feel the stone walls crumble
bells swing
and toll in towers
I feel that people are confused and ignorant
of why they live
what is the need of them
where is the author
or the stage director
who is an actor
and who is just a spectator
and what they should expect in the realm of lies.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
We are betrayed not by notes
in our diaries kept from childhood
nor by the legal documents
with impressive seals of innocence
nor by the wax halo of a museum
but by things of everyday use
that had served
with an insidious reliability
that had become almost alive
witnesses of determined ill-fate –
filled up wells in time
heaps of salt in the desert of sighs
tireless guardians of the gold of the present
and the table lamp that had shone
like an emanation of the spirit
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
I do not know
but if it will comfort you
repeat that there are many of us
and even more – 
of silent blasters
meeting in unfixed places
recognising each other –
poor yorick –
from the open teeth making smile
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
The sorrow of little nails and the fuss of rivets
the ballet of the little dirty wheels –
how they would open blackened cavities
by tearing ulcers seals of prohibition
forgetting tracks of precepts and commandments –
and you could say – we did not walk
through blades we were not repeating
the dry wag of a reed
the secretive cough of a brook (into a hand) –
how they would spread in holes of the nimble asphalt
renouncing morals
the harmonious faithful ticking
that was inherited from ages
repeating the chaos of elements
fermentation of alkalis
splitting of truth
and wandering of influential heavenly bodies
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
– Things that disintegrate in ardent visions
the visions crumbling in imagination
must be the most real echo and the shadow
of deep becoming
Such travels –
a dizzy separation of a heated cell
in the swooning pit of feeling –
are dearer to you than odysseus's experience
the loud pronouncements of the world
and the knock
of weighty proofs that you'll be recognized
from the unrusting rings of action
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
In the picture he is in the shadow and smiling –
the master of abortive rapprochements
the miner of secretive sighs
the fireman of ice
He alone saw
how icarus fell down
and with lot's wife who turned back
he saw the hideous grimace of the lord
so he would not trust anymore gods or flights
but would rather remain below
to believe to wait to hope
and to smile

Translated by Antanas Danielius


SUMMER

transparent 
gothic of a morning cathedral
within and above us 
with a flight of
swallows
with thorns
crowned and pierced
by the anguish of an ultrasonic plane
upon descent you lift a stone
from the threshold to the clouds
– let's go!
but those roots
of teeth 
are still clinging branches 
of hands
is it really in vain
the blossoms' atonement
turned into fruits
in the markets
a froth of blood with pits
and medicine from the chokey
sorrows of childhood

Translated by Edita Petrauskaitė


ELEGY

in the still land of crystals
I searched for my dead brother

	his voice still wanders in the tape recorder's tracks
	in the morning I hear his steps
	fading in the distance on the road of a dream
	I watch his last fingerprint
	disappear into papyrus
	is body limit and verdict?

and she said I'll bloom in a wormwood
lying down in his wife's grave
he was forging a winged lion
with a human face

	while you live – a clamorous fury
	as you leave – silence and revolt

in the thin light of a crystal
I tried to grasp the essence without qualities

	the empty spaces between things are left for us
	and a winged lion with quartz eyes
	when we call the name out of the windows
	(what windows if we stay here)
	only a sharp stony wind

in the vast land of crystals
I searched for our dead brother

Translated by Edita Petrauskaitė


FOOTSTEPS

we are betrayed neither by the notes
in diaries kept since childhood
nor by legal documents
with substantial stamps of innocence
nor by the waxen aura of museums
but by everyday things that have served us
with insidious permanence
that become almost living
witnesses of predetermined haplessness
the clogged up wells of time
salt stacks in the wilderness of sighs
unwary guardians of the present time gold
and a table lamp with a shade
that glowed like an emanation of spirit

Translated by Edita Petrauskaitė


SILVA RERUM

A group of horsemen rode out of a Dore lithograph
and reached the edge of a book
A table lamp timidly shrank in the magic circle of light
Ink thickened like a nebula giving birth to a system of planets
The suspense was becoming unbearable
and then from the darkness onto the lighted circle alighted
a graceful moth Isidora
(for you she can dance this table these horsemen)
with Jesenin's noose on her neck
scuttling in a primeval car

There were always some spikes of a wheel
always some suicidal poet
an antique tunic is ruffled
by a plot of coincidences
a dirty trick of reality

The sins of a century can't be expiated all at once
and thought is the basis of invisible freedom –
I defended myself with handy maxims
The moth rushed into another level
The horseman crossed the forest of symbols and were approaching me

I remembered:

There was a house with chimeras
on the roof and a lantern
sang the road like Homer
chained in a place of blindness

The stop where romantic poets get out
their tranquil conversations 
their faded smiles
A barricade stone
becomes the corner stone of a new institution

I say Whitman I don't believe 
that lists of things in a poem
will recreate the harmony of the world
juicy smirks of watermelons
pleats of dresses on sale
inflatable protuberances of the mattresses
Over there Rafal Vojachek committed suicide
Like a rabbit he tested his life
in the sobering stations and venereal hospitals

The horsemen in the dashing cars
plunge into the forests of things

Poor magician –
didn't manage to call on the rain –
stands beneath rancid streams
summoned by his wicked disciple
stares at the blossoms opening up on his palm

Translated by Edita Petrauskaitė

Born in the village of Gilušis, Almis Grybauskas is the author of four collections of poetry. He is well known as a translator of prose from Polish and Chech; most recently for his translation into Lithuanian of Milan Kundera's The Impossible Lightness of Being, as well as the work of Vaclav Havel.