THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN POET

these are night's ashes: the pages burned till daybreak
these mortal flotillas growing remote over the foam
the butterfly a fiery instant clobbered into carbon
like a word that tears up spirit and still is not the one

out of lost days out of days never lived in
that faded in time along with the attic upholstery
snows without stars fates without stars keep falling
into those Christmas trails froze even you to death

you had no friends yet you will see them dressed in shrouds
seated on lightning as they breathe into your sleeping face
though towards morning they break up from early clockstrokes
all will turn light because the world holds no darkness for long

these are night's ashes: the burnt moments written down
hairs that soaked up the fingers now cling to the face
I saw two children run across the yard complaining
that tomorrow had dawned and you were back in yesterday

we will approach close enough to sink into your silence
our wax will drip in meltdown from your candle
now deadly flotillas lift off on a flutter of sails
and a desklamp by the window will not go out all night

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



NOT YOU

walking away, a buttonless garment:
a person from behind, a faceless person
you wait for him to stumble, search him for flaws
you yourself wanted to unfold: he throws you

you chop out chunks of text barehanded as if
your fingers had the braille screaming right at them
the walker walks carrying his limitations
while yours stay all in place since you

are not from the Bermudas nor from any storm
no triangle yet can claim whatever you've lost
you search for a homeland that's closed off
with cows by the roadside kissing the grass

but he goes off he is totally unique
someone put the wrong books under his nose
you no longer read his changing moods
and none of his truths show in the textual sludge

walking away and leaving you
a life that's filled with other blood
you're nothing to him you're in no one's boat
now if you had to die you'd die over again

that lie of being! grain has no life!
that fear of heights! when you've been raised
above everything you've copied till now
he is not you: no doubt he is the guilty one

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



ELLIPSIS

tell me tell me I can't hear
come close closer I can't see
which of our deaths
is for you?

I'm green with a chrome of leaves
in waters of fish all fish
you're just a hair's breadth from her and yet
nothing gives!

at other different addresses
all ensues takes place and repeats
yet you'll find right away the others
just don't suit.

with all the patience in your chest
you'll live out what you have become
just one point where the script breaks off
this one ...

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis

Kęstutis Navakas was born at Šeimyniškiai, a village near the center of the Lithuania, and attended schools at Kaunas. He has had various jobs in printing and now runs a modern bookshop in the old quarter of Kaunas. He has published translations from the German, essays and articles, along with two books of his verse. Under the high polish of a studied, sardonic panache, his poems seem bent on preserving a tremulous anxiety from even the direst predicaments. He functions at high risk yet manages fully to exploit the very rhetoric he is trying to subvert as inauthentic. One clue to this intentional paradox may be found in the phrase he chose as a title for one of his books: wrecked baroque.