THE URGE TO LIVE

The urge to live is an ocean.
The lunar force which hauls flooding and ebbing.
Speed of sunlight which goes right through the brain.
Love and sex alike are each only a small part of that overall urge.
The urge to create. The urge to love and to hate. The urge to exist.
To exist as world, as universe, as an ant or H2O molecule.
The urge to live of those who really are alive is the urge to take in
more than has been allotted.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



FISH-SCALE

A fisherman's book: the scale of a fish.
From sea, from lake, from the source-stream of rivers.
A scale is like a tree-ring: it has written into it the life-story of one
fish along with the life-stories of all the world's fish: the years,
winters and summers, every living moment.
Remember: every fish is a noble, living creature.
If you are not hungry, do not kill the fish: that is the message
written into every fish-scale more than a million years ago.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



SPEEDWAY

With an increase in speed, faces blur into one formless,
	anonymous mass.
Landscapes turn into pictures painted by some deranged
	painter, with colors all a mess and lines taking off
	for infinity.
Who is there to take a relaxed look at a tree, rock, or person?
The highway of civilization is the most dangerous of all
	narcotics available to humans.
Meditation, clarity of mind: these are static entities that will
	have to be entered into the Red book.
Could it be true that we are condemned to keep speeding up,
	faster and faster, until we become nothing?
There are fewer and fewer persons brave enough to jump off
	the speedway into motionless, dew-drenched
	roadside grass.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



KALEIDOSCOPE AND EGG

The one in a hurry stays in place, the one standing still travels
	in mind and spirit.
The one standing condenses the world into a magic oval:
	it is the egg everything has its source in.
Kaleidoscope and egg are the two items no one can conjoin
	into one with any degree of success.
But maybe the great set of scales does exist, and for now it may
	still be possible to achieve balance.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



SAILOR AT THE TAVERN

The wine cup deepens and widens: it has become a sea, with
	no shore in sight.
If you were like a sky-blue skiff, you could sail happily across
	the red-tinged, swaying depth, with a yellow sun
	painted on your sail and the real sun at its peak
	overhead.
Where are the flights, dancing the joyous dance as in the
	canvas by Matisse? Sensations crackle like ice,
	while the wine cup acts like an anchor, securing
	you to the tavern's tabletop.
And of the sea there is only as much as there is azure in the
	pupils of an old mariner.
It's no longer the storm that sways him in his bed at night,
	but a solitary wine that never diminishes in value.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis

Alis Balbierius was born in the northern village of Šlepščiai. He studied biology to become a teacher and has worked as an environmentalist. Publishing steadily since the mid-eighties, he has produced a diverting, ambivalent body of work which registers both topicality and staying power. His prose poems are sketchy, provisional essays in arrangements of sleek, compact paragraphs that readily conform to long-limned, loose stanzas of free verse.