LITTLE CHILDREN

Earth as well as ocean are polluted.
Rain comes down – and off comes people's hair.
In this great world live our hope, our beauty –
Little children, needing love and care.

From a handful of white seaside sand,
From a cloud that wayward winds may bring,
From both bread and water – who will save
Little children, with their tender skin.

Where to carry them and where to hide?
Not a spot of which we can be sure!
Marked by atoms, play upon this globe
Little children – on this globe impure.

Here and there – on both sides of the ocean –
What are you all doing, friend and foe?
In this world, eroded by pollution,
Little children have to live and grow.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


* * *

Towards winter rivers are all frozen,
And meadows – full as bowls are they.
The rain-soaked cabins of our fathers
Seem birds that have not flown away.

Now it gets darker, darker, darker
Beyond the windows, woods and swamps,
And Dad, becoming sadder, sadder
His elbows on the table props.

Out of the window, smoking, smoking
He looks, while Mother spins and sighs,
Not me already – her grandchildren
Awaiting late, she cries and cries.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


MY NEIGHBOUR ADOMAS

Adomas chose a proper wife:
Healthy, industrious and fertile.
She digs potatoes, bakes brown bread;
Cook – housewife – never leaves the cottage dirty.

Already six sit at his table;
Potato-mash with pork they eat.
And each year he brings down the cradle
And stands the village drunks a treat.

Each year Adomas has more worries:
How dear can meal and cotton be!
As if for fun he hugs Maryte,
But all such fun ends seriously.

Yet be it as it may, he's happy,
Continuer of his huge clan,
Rye-reaper, beet-digger Adomas,
And agricultural working-man.

Conferences are held on ploughing;
We've learned to grow wheat everywhere.
Why not show him on television?
His rich experience he'll share!

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


WHEN THE WIND DIES DOWN

The wind's died down and I feel weary.
The trees have shed their senseless leaves.
Yet what I say at moments dreary
You must not, never must believe.

Keep a clear head, be straight and sober,
Watch us and don't avert your eyes.
For in this house you're the last swallow
To nest and twitter summerwise.

Our holy years have scattered slowly,
Like crumbling bread from happy hands.
Who pecked the crumbs up from the floordust
We neither saw nor understand.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


RHETORIC

We talk and talk. We wave our cigarettes,
Domestic lightenings shielded by our palms.
We talk and talk and talk for all our worth,
Our age's talking idols, as if charmed.

At home, at work, in restaurants, on stage
We tear each other into little pieces.
While stage-lights burn, across the wall's wide screen
Our comic shadows go on leaping, ceaseless.

All this is stagecraft. But – the play moves on;
Who knows how things will turn out finally?
And among all of us – how very odd! –
The role of mainstay has been left to me.

It sometimes seems Time cuts us out as models
To pass to others gestures, thoughts and looks;
Yet there will come new men, who with one buffet
Knock off nine heads, as told in story-books.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


BEFORE HAYMAKING

After all the summits and abysses,
After all the whistles and hurrahs,
Like a dog which Master's hand releases,
I would like to tumble on the grass.

It's a joy to go and ramble barefoot
After having finished one more book.
A huge monster reeking of tobacco,
In the grass like Gulliver I look.

At my head's a birchtree inches high;
This year, too, they'll mow it down, you'll see.
Popping out inquisitive green eyes,
A grasshopper hops o'er hill-like me.

From the forest comes the stench of peat-fires.
Starry daisies dangle, dazzling white.
Flowers, you will soon turn into haymeal,
But believe me, that's no cause for fright.

It'll be much worse when yellow raindrops
Shower down, and only bare stalks rise.
We will all be saved by scythes and cattle
Looking on with cold and tranquil eyes.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


LANDSCAPE IN GREEN AND BLUE

Both water and air are aflutter
In prickly-soft scintillation.
So lake and sky into each other
Sink in infatuation.

So the sun unfolds into blossom
And fuses us two together.
Green and blue are the only colours
At the bottom and up in heaven.

The instants run, forming a pathway.
We'll stay on, though everything ceases.
There's life yet – beyond the margin.
Behind us. Above us. Beneath us.

After this instant. After
This flight and the fall – like death.
We breathe. We will live. But I envy
One in whom stop both heartbeat and breath.

One who draws a line with a knife-point,
Severing links and ties.
I'll return as a cloud – I've a feeling –
From green waters into blue skies.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


A SURGE OF BLOOD AND A VOICE

Who will sing
The eternal song
If we keep quiet
Clenching our teeth?

Who will give voice and sight
To the blind world
If my hands
Do not touch you?

You are my time,
My days and years,
The golden stream
Of sand in the hourglass.

Painful darkness
And fluttering flight,
A scarlet whirlwind
Over non-being.

Ah, love, love –
The final word!
A surge of blood and a voice –
Did you happen?

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


BEYOND THE HILL

Distant village soaked through in the rain, 
You resemble a child who's been lost far away. 
Do we all with a fright now and then 
Visit you at the close of the day?

Taking breath on the hilltop we stare 
Seeking tensely a light on the plain as before. 
We shall not find a soul some day there, 
In the home that's not home any more.

The green hues of your forest and field 
With a threatening foreboding start pricking my heart. 
I don't know how to guard or to shield 
My old home and the warmth of its hearth.

What must I do so that while I roam 
It could keep my own family's memories green, 
How to find my own path leading home 
When in March all the weathers convene?

What can I ever do – losing you on my way
Like my youth and my playmates here ploughing this plain,
Like my father's fresh footprints impressed in the clay
On the slope of the hill in the rain...

Translated by Lionginas Pažūsis


A SIGH

Like a worm breath 
Exhaled into chill winter air, 
Our feelings, 
Thoughts 
And even vows of love 
Are doomed to disappear.

Though nothing in this world
Is lost without a trace,
I wonder nonetheless:
Is anyone the warmer?..

Yet to myself
I keep repeating:
"I love you."

I love you  
And know that this 
When all is said and done,
Is not so insignificant 
And not so easy.

And all of you can do
At least the same – 
Like on a winter night
One to another
And again
One to another
Sigh out your warmth:
"I love you..."

Translated by Lionginas Pažūsis

Born into a peasant family in the village of Naujaplenta, Alfonsas Maldonis studied Lithuanian language and literature at Vilnius University. From 1959 to 1962 he was poetry consultant at the Union of Lithuanian Writers. From 1962 to 1970 worked as a chief editor at the Lithuanian publishing house VAGA. From 1970 to 1976 he was vice-chairman of the board of the official Union of Lithuanian Writers and became chairman of the board in 1976. His verse was first published in 1956. In Maldonis' poetry the traditional emotional lyricism, associated in Lithuania with country themes, is combined with the attributes of civilization, a prosaic colouring of imagery and a conversational tone. The poet perceives and conveys everyday feelings and experiences as a subtle analyst of modern man's psychology, as well as his complex life and his relations with the world around him.