MY THREE LOVELIEST POEMS

I

While all those nights can only go unsaid
And not predominately for being about me
I still can hear down to the bottom of a well
Where a silver ring lies without rusting

A long time back I'd call your name there
And get eleven echoes in response
Today the silver turns the water clearer
While silence brings despair

II

Your hair as messy as the Magdalene's
You craved sleep too lazy to get up
You didn't feel how quiet as the day
A boat pulled up next to your bed

I was struck dumb at such a sight
As if I'd seen the city burning
You slept while I started to dream
The drifting skiff was a tree creaking

III

We were so quiet sitting there the grey
Bird of melancholy evening
Taking no notice of us
Came up really close

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



* * *

I certify that everything was left there
Betrayed consigned to death suppressed
Time past was the fear of aging fast
The past that has no limetree blossoming

The sad old scenes repeat themselves
Moustached old women pumping gas
It's not the first time you were traumatized
Wearing a white dress in the diamond grove

Fire still walks and replicates itself
Day flares then slowly cools back down again
While with our iron nails we keep
Rye bread nailed to the tableplank

In a feast of embers nothing counts
No deaths just numbers and statistics
You may be sick I may be sick as well
The sun above the city gleams prophetic

An evening without words or guests
Weights frozen the chains also froze
This city is a huge black bird
Now haunts the world Snow falls

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



OVERWOUND TIMEPIECE

All that loving going on: people cattle moths
Yet one thought I could not shake free
Tonight the blind would be crowning me
Come you all take a good close look at death

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



AUGUST ZODIAC: LABYRINTH

When everything was done for it appeared
He had no given right to make mistakes
What then is all his fine talk worth
Given our November and December holidays

For a long time that year it did not rain somehow
Birds were feeding from prophets' hands
Bread had no meaning words made you choke
Sanctuaries in decay slowly mildewed

All stayed calm even though they knew
The parchment would be running out today
They saw the sky but kept on saying heaven
Yet birds were not all that they saw flying

Out where the heavens of memory start
And moonlight of betrayals shines
Bread had no meaning with words to choke on
And where the seeds fell walls began to sprout

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis

Arnas Ališauskas was born at Širvintos, where he attended local schools. He worked as a literary editor while taking courses at Vilnius University. On the evidence of his first book, Ališauskas is a reserved yet original formalist. The rhetoric is spare but telling, as it speaks of recovering or re-inventing a dignified civility for affairs both public and private, and all in a cadence as common as the measured progress of a heartbeat.