Poems from the poetry book Long-term side effects (Liekamieji reiškiniai)

 

Translated by Eglė Elena Murauskaitė

 

 

 

Here comes a princess:
lovely, athletic, supple, and lean
her strike - like a lightning bolt.

Here comes a queen:
her dust jacket lined with the salt of her sweat
green whiff of labour and bouts of (seemingly contained) panic
fog of fatigue, burning lungs and wrists ablaze, bloody
knuckles, an ocean of might, the muscles flex tight, she’s got nothing left
to lose or to gain
irate as a draught.

Each with a braid
wrapped around her wrist:
queen versus princess
whose is the victory

Who shall prevail.

 

Taste and see

1944

Taste and see:
Mary is seated under the apple tree; white blossoms are falling around her.
White colostrum splashing against soggy grass.
Mary is seated under the apple tree, clutching her baby.
Thundering earth.
A downpour. Petals stream down.
Mary would rather the ground opened up to swallow her, she would rather hide in the grass or turn into an apple tree.
Mary curls up against the apple tree trunk, thundering skies, lightning earth.
That baby exploding her heart.

Taste

Mary is seated under the apple tree, and can but clutch the baby.
Bullets scream past
Wasp-like, stinging the apple tree with lightning speed
Biting into the damp, shivering grass

And see

Bullets rain down, down pour the apple tree sprigs, the seventh babe cuddled up in her arms
Six children in the ground

Hidden in tunnels their father had dug

That the Lord is good.

(3)

 

 

Taste and see

1953

Taste
Mary is already milking the thirtieth cow
Hurriedly squeezing the teat in her shivering hands
Thunder, it shakes her
Hot lightning bolts biting into soggy grass
Seven milkmaids a-screaming, fused into a single word
Marуууyyyy!
Mary grips up the lightning bucket of milk
A downpour
Mary dashes for cover, joining the callers

And see

The skies splitting down
The heavenly blades
Like the lightning strike down the cow
The rain keeps on pounding
The fallen cow in the soggy grass
Jets of dead milk streaming down
Mary’s alive, fainting amidst the dumbstruck milkmaids

That the Lord is good.

 

 

Him

So lightly he moves, like water, evading the rocks:
how pretty, I tell him, yet he laughs it off: ten years to the day when his body had plunged into that unfamiliar pond, unfamiliar waters break spines with such ease:
unable to move for two weeks, upon rising he no longer felt his legs, though they carried him forth, even danced, - once he sat down on a cigarette (burning), his friends roared with laughter, he giggled as well,
only the smell to tell him he’s roasting, a hole in the pants, yet no pain,
no place for it to remain,
the bodies are strange, miraculous bodies they are, if you talk to them gently, - gently he treads on the mill, and here he is moving again, like water evading the rocks, tomorrow he’s skipping the workout, tomorrow
he’ll toast, to the thirty-ninth year of his marriage, and next year, he quips, he would hope for a medal, I would also like one,
a medal, I’d like to be jovially moving around, without any tears soaking my covid mask, I’m laughing out loud as I listen to him,
as I quietly hope that our bodies are truly miraculous, it will soon be six months since my body dove down unfamiliar slope, unfamiliar waters - they turn into snow with such ease, and with ease can the snow breaks a spine: I now have a bolt in the leg of this body, it shines in the dark between tendons and moist vessels, my miracle body could devour that bolt, ever slowly, tomorrow I’ll mark my nineteenth year in marriage, I’d sure like a medal, I quip, in the darkness I hear the bolt click, as I kneel down to pray.

 

 

This we know

We know that each woman inside
hides a dragoness: slithery, proud
in some she’s the size of a swallow, in others
a nuclear star
when, unsettled, you saw the dragoness squeal
she has a feminine bird house with children replete
her children forever are famished
their mouths open up for a scream before
catching the gnat
of fatigue, do not wake them while their mother
sleeps

 

 

The hymn of joy

The hymn of joy is
Two dogs, a-swirl in the garden

A boat of a hammock between apple trees is
a tune of weary delight

As we sway, the ripening apples
Uncover and cover the sky up again
red are their underbellies, green little tails