ENCOUNTER IN VILNIUS

Two strangers. One room. 
Having lived, like you, 
deeper than the sea that divides us, 
I lay my multiple lives 
besides yours 
among the gifts on the coffee table 
between us.

Your home closed to me 
and mine to you 
(Palanga and New York obliterated), 
we meet in this collective enclosure, 
"International" Gintaras Hotel; 
Lithuanian roses from a stranger –  
your mother –  
wither tall and unbending 
over the red cyrillic telephone 
(some say it's the radio that's bugged.)
	
But who could understand us? 
Our language 
is space and time, 
tough 
like this dark Lithuanian bread 
ready for the white eloquence 
of the newspaper-wrapped farmer cheese 
and mushrooms-in-cream
you've brought me.	

Your gifts trouble me. 
"What can I send you, 
for all this, from America?" 
"You've come – what more?
 
Strangers across continents and a century 
in a small hotel room, 
encounter –

we are home together 
knowing 
home is not walls, nor crypt, nor sky. 
We sit 
on this cliff's edge 
before an abyss 
I welcome 
like a known dream.


TIME – VILNIUS UNIVERSITY

Life shines out 
while time 
crowds in 
with rocks, 
bones, ashes.

Minutes 
dripping blood and fire 
coagulate; 
stalagmites of years 
fire up 
old shadows.

Pulse 
outpulses veins; 
a song 
outsings the singer; 
a dream 
outdreams a dreamer.

Dusk in Vilnius darknes 
into dawn.


REFUGEE BALTIC BEACHCOMBER ON FIRE ISLAND

I still sift sand. Red noons, he sheltered me with shade
	(the tree shook off its leaves);
corpsed nights, he kindled me new friends (it's they 
	who change to flumes of smoke and slee.)

He walked with us in Kaunas, Vilnius, Palanga 
	to his bloody amber cross;
I fled his dunes to save his bread from godless men
	(refugee  –  I'm lost...)

His image in each flame, I burned to rise to him 
	(straws and cinders rose);
earth's wanderer, I shunned strange men who bid me 
	share unleavened, alien loaves.

Shifting shorelines search like eyes; rock, like bread, 
	rises in its mold:
oceans chant strange solace, churning rock to sand 
	(I sift  –  I sift the globe...)

Nickels and dimes I find on Fire Island – and rock 
	reduced to paradigm:
dustmote man-minds fragment atoms, shores and stars
	(unified in him.)