HAPPINESS

You spoke about a little bit of happiness
As if it were a drop of sparkling dew.
You said we could create a nice, small universe
With just enough of light and love for two.

You are afraid of life, that's clear to me,
Just like a little bird's afraid of storms.
And so today your words arouse anxiety
In me, your happiness that neither chills nor warms.

For nowadays we live in such a time
When neither life nor love can ever end.
So do not talk to me about such happiness –
It is too small, too small for me, my friend.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


ASHES

It's so cloudy today in the sky,
In the street where the tree leaves fly,

And you feel so alarmed, so alone,
Just as if you were far from home,

as if lost. In the sky float clouds,
Streaming westward in ashen-grey crowds.

And it seems that upon the old wall
Dark-grey ashes in heavy flakes fall,

And their ominous hue causes dread;
Now they seem to pile over your head,

On your shoulders they heavily fall,
And their bitterness pierces your soul.

Heavy – heavy as mountains, immense
Are the ashes of days without sense.

Woe to him on whose heart they alight:
They will smother both love and delight.

Life's cold wind will bear him away
Like these yellow leaves flying today.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


* * *

In my life, there is something wrong.
Maybe old age
Is coming along.
For already I've stopped counting days.
I look round with a listless gaze;
I shouldn't live so –
In a moody haze.

I'm not living the way I should.
As if life were really
Making me weary:
I drink more than is good,
Love others beside my own wife.
And yet it's so hopelessly dreary,
My life.

My life's out of tune.
All my days
I moon
Around as if at a second-hand sale
Where all's getting hopelessly cheap and stale.
I live as if getting old,
Too cold.

In my life
There's something gone wrong.
With riff-raff I get along,
Avoiding old friends, evading their eyes
If they catch me outside by surprise.
Something is wrong with my life.
It's dangerous
And unwise.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


* * *

Airports. Hotels.
Stations. Motels.
I'm sick of searching;
Like spinning tyres,
Repetition tires.
The night's like a huge closed cage.
Insomnia saps my nerves.
			Crazy age!
Mad  rhythms!
A desperate cry tears the world,
A desperate cry:
"Enough of this whirl!" –
Somewhere between the sky
And the earth by somebody hurled.
On my lips is the bitter, stale taste of steel.
Someone still begs for love
As if for bread – still!
That begging burns mind and soul –
What you used to have – you've given it all,
Though maybe not quite in time.
Maybe sometimes it was out of place.
You gave it away like small change,
Scattered through space.
You look at the night;
It doesn't get light.
Something like bell-chimes around you sounds;
In the night something pounds and pounds and pounds.
Alas! The bell doesn't yet chime for you.
Tortured, you'll have to search,
To repeat it all anew.
Again hotels,
Airports, motels.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg

Born in Joniškis, Juozas Macevičius studied law at Vilnius University from 1946 to 1949. In 1951-1952 he studied at the Literary Institute in Moscow. In 1953-1954 he was secretary of the Kaunas branch of the official Union of Lithuanian Writers and from 1965 to 1970 a secretary of the board of the Union. He also was editor of the journal Pergalė (Victory). Intensity of thought, intimate frankness and simplicity of expression are the most characteristic features of Macevicius' poetry.