(1928 – 1990)
TO LITHUANIA
You are small, you easily find room
In the palms of a Čiurlionis' King...
You are like a slice of wholesome bread
On the festive table of the world...
On the globe you are a tiny patch,
A steel plate from a Grünwald suit of armour,
A trace of Pirčiupis ablaze with blood,
A crystal droplet of a sky-blue lake,
A bright green sunrise over fallow lands,
A rain of sunbeams on a city square.
On the globe you are an amber speck
With the scent of pinewood and the gleam of blood...
Only in our love you're truly great
And in our palms you are invincible
And in our dreams you are a fairy-tale
And in our eyes you are a land of sunshine.
Translated by Lionginas Pažūsis
HISTORY
History. History is not papyrus rolls,
dried yellow parchments,
not marble on pedestals.
History is etched in the human heart,
in hope, in memory,
in revolutions, revolts,
the stakes of heretics,
the truth of lunatics,
betrayals,
triumphs, scaffolds, crowns,
concentration camps,
the henchman's mark.
All this can be found
in the small and infinite human heart, –
scrawled, hidden, locked, –
in the heart which
beats under your palm,
the heart
which at this very moment
passes by unrecognized.
History. History
is like music,
like the live bell
in the chapel of Vilnius.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
LITHUANIAN MOTHER
You came to the burned village and
kneeling poured a handful
of burning ashes into
a linen scarf which you hid
by your heart.
A black falcon clawed at your heart.
Then you went home.
Your feet touched the rocks, the river, the grass.
A wild apple tree invited you into its shade.
White ears of rye caressed your hands.
And under your heart fluttered
a stranger to this earth still to be born, –
as you reached your home, on a high hill.
On a high hill,
you bowed to the East and to the West,
to the South and to the North,
you untied your linen scarf, –
a red lark soared into the sky.
While you went on with
the pulling of flax,
the baking of bread,
with putting your son to sleep.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
UNMAILED LETTERS
TO FATHER
I keep writing you letters
and I keep talking to you.
We hardly ever talked...
We just hid from each other our pain
and avoided each other's tears.
How you loved your poplars and birches
a plowed field, the proud rising rye...
Will you let me slip into my letters
the tremor of leaves,
the warm smell of bread,
or, in the palm of your hand,
the small yellow sun?
You'd be happy with only that.
..............................................
When the wind knocks at my blue window pane,
When silence grows like a lump in my throat,
I will write you letters.
You can read them
from your distance
with the eyes of the stars
or the glass fingers of
silvery rain.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
THE HOMERS
He will not return, your Odysseus, this time he will not return.
No Penelopes with their spindles are waiting for him
by the steady hum of the spinning wheels.
The Cassandras are silent, the voiceless Cassandras are silent.
And Achylles without his armor is frail like a child
and falls like grass.
The gods will play and punish and avenge and die.
But Ithaca and Troy will rise again – from the night,
from smoke, from flames.
And the Homers – blind and all-seeing –
shall walk through a thousand years,
from South to North, and call
each country by its name.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
LITHUANIA
Rain waiting happiness a lily
sweet linden scant –
all this fits in your name.
It is easy
to walk against the wind
for the spark
from those ancient fires
of a hundred years ago
is still alive
in us.
Springs throb
when your palm touches the earth.
A bird soars
in your sky.
Happiness is
to leave
with your name
on the lips.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
* * *
While caraway and buttercups
Grow thick beside the Levuo,
I'll go into the meadows. Will
They go on living when I go?
These meadows white and yellow-hued
Are the earth's words and nothing else.
Their gentle flutter on this dawn
Is dear to me as the sound of bells.
I'll walk into the meadow now
And listen to their whispered speech.
Each eye-like buttercup, each flower
Like lights of home my heart will reach.
While caraway and buttercups
Grow thick beside the Levuo,
I'll walk into the meadows. Will
This joy keep living when I go?
Translated by Dorian Rottenberg
NERINGA PINES
On and on they march
Over Neringa quicksands,
Bent and sped on by the westerner,
Tall, speechless and boughless pine trees,
With crowns tossed and shaken
Burdened with the storm's wailing and the seagulls' sobbing.
Like ancient rust-eaten statues –
A multitude sombre and silent –
They march on, Neringa pines,
Over the quicksand landward,
My sisters
Tall.
Translated by Dorian Rottenberg
* * *
The garden floats beneath the quiet moon,
and apples fall.
The echo like a bell
fills earth and sky.
The apples fall, still warm and full of sunshine.
The dark seeds ring
inside their juicy, fragrant bodies.
Under the black shell of the sky
Night hides the sun.
Under alarm and calm
the live heart lies unshelled
like a dark ripe seed.
The garden floats beneath the quiet moon.
Already all the appletrees have born their fruit.
Translated by Dorian Rottenberg
INTERMEZZO
I'm open wide – to the last nerve,
Open to the last hidden thought.
Not like a wound –
Like lips stretched to the sun,
'Twixt love and death stretched taut.
I'm open wide – to the last nerve,
At the bottom of a living stream.
Air flows through me like birch-trees' sap.
Midsummer's sun, the buzz of bees
Flow through me, hum and gleam.
Caught in a living stream am I.
I do not ask where will it flow.
I only cling to tree shadows,
With bird-songs draped from foot to brow.
The stream is full of vibrant light...
I do not ask where it will flow.
The stream is full of vibrant light...
Sky, grass, fast-flowing, past me go,
Midsummer's sunshine, birch-tree go...
Who am I in this timeless flow?
I'm open wide – to the last nerve,
Open to the last hidden thought...
Translated by Dorian Rottenberg
LITTLE TOWNS
In the hot sunshine at the end of summer
the little towns, in mallow to their roofs,
with lindens growing up to the very white sky,
with their verandahs
where toys and children lie asleep after their lunch;
so quiet,
so far away
from noisy crossings, railway stations, airports,
those little towns
like grains in an unbending heavy wheat-ear.
August.
Translated by Dorian Rottenberg
* * *
I bring to you this poem,
this cottage where a white cloud lives,
where you can come and warm yourself
or be alone.
At table here
they don't serve silver spoons.
Red carpets aren't spread out here either.
But I don't want
you to remain
tonight
without a roof.
Translated by Dorian Rottenberg
AN AFTERNOON
On the riverbank
In deep grass
Under the large shade of the willow
Sleeps a white horse.
The forefathers' silver scythes have rung out.
The wooden carts have rattled away on the highways
Like a June thunderstorm.
The wells and the sagebrush have dried out.
The fires of the night herdsmen have gone out.
On the riverbank
In deep grass
Under the large shade of the willow
Sleeps a white horse.
Translated by Marija Stankus-Saulaitis
RESURRECTION
Arise,
felled trees,
from banks, far fields, primeval forests.
Arise,
torn birds,
in sleepy nests and in dawning nebulous space.
Arise,
dead herbs
and dead hopes.
All you –
fallen as stars,
turned to dust,
pressed by stone.
All you –
crucified,
sold,
betrayed –
On the morning flooded with nearing suns –
in a small poem
arise – – –
Translated by Marija Stankus-Saulaitis
ON A SNOWY MIDNIGHT
I left for the snowy midnight
To bow to the earth and the sky.
And in this silver point of space,
Where winds and ages cross,
Snowflakes fall and seconds fall
On my hair, upon my palms.
And they burn like salt,
And fetter the feet
With white unbreakable ropes.
But I shall not flee!
Only in this silver point of space,
Where houses and trees breathe behind my shoulders,
Where snowflakes fall and seconds fall
Upon my palms, into my heart, –
In red letters
I silently write on the snow
One name, one name...
Translated by Marija Stankus-Saulaitis
BREAD AND SALT
Through a high gate, decorated
with wreaths and slogans...
Through a high gate
I enter
Like a guest
The dale,
Encompassed by woods, clouds, and flights of swans.
And I accept
With lips chapped by north winds
The black night and the white day
As bread and salt.
Translated by Marija Stankus-Saulaitis
THE SUN
After your mother the first to kiss you was the sun.
Like a distant red island
It shone above the stork's nest.
And the first sadness of farewell
It left you one evening.
And from the east to the west
An unquenchable fire
Envelops you in an arc on this earth.
And your blood quietly ripples
Your forefathers' prayer to the sun.
By the sun you sought your path.
By the sun you sought your home.
And by the sun you sought your bonfire.
After your mother the first to kiss you was the sun.
Translated by Marija Stankus-Saulaitis
* * *
...What if pain be not a foe?
for man enters the world
through pain,
for man rises godlike
from inquisitions
and the blaze of crematories,
and godlike creates
a new world –
from the clay of daily life,
from the voice of the corncrake,
from the colors of the ash bole,
from small words,
articulated for thousands of years...
Translated by Marija Stankus-Saulaitis
* * *
The squares empty and sail
into the distance like ships.
In the green moonlight shudder
the tall silhouettes of towers.
Fragrant lindens like hearbs
nestle beneath one's palm.
Long ago the drums quieted, –
sing, flute.
Utter –
That which the lips cannot utter.
Sate –
That which the soil cannot sate.
Shelter –
That which the sun cannot shelter.
The wind speaks to the cloud,
The tree speaks to the bird.
The old cross at the edge of the field – to the rock.
The wicket of the homestead speaks to the sunset.
The threshold – to distanced footsteps.
I speak to the coat with the bullethole
that my father left behind.
Translated by Marija Stankus-Saulaitis
SCHEHERAZADE
The thousand and one nights
Of insidious, snake-like delays...
The thousand and one nights
Of prisons and fairy tales. –
Talk, Scheherazade... The sultan is listening.
Your executioners are close by.
Talk... And as you talk let your words
Unlock the incredible heights of the sky.
Talk, Scheherazade... The sultan is listening.
The sultan is ravenous. Your fate waits in suspense.
Do not stop! The executioners are quick to obey.
There is bitterness in your throat and your voice is tense.
But you must talk... And with each trembling word which you say at night
You pay for each new breath of air and for another hour of life,
You pay for your strength and your helplessness
And for all that which may be lost or possessed.
Talk, Scheherazada... The sultan is ravenous.
Your words flow slowly like blood from an open wound.
But, oh, do not yet give up... For the thousand and first night is still far
And the last handful of clay is still unpaid.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
IN JAZZ RHYTHMS
This restlessness with no name
overcomes us and drives us on
And we run away from home
in thoughts or on trains or planes
And we spill into the streets
and fill hotels and cafes
Or set out on a raft alone –
to confront the seas.
Our eyes have gone blind
from the clever dazzle of numbers and rocket glares,
Our ears are deaf from loudspeaker words
and flutes in the spheres, –
Stunned and still
we taste from a hand
the sharp seed of the hemp.
Our spines are soft
but we find it hard to hide behind the walls of concrete and glass
and we slide up and down on the spiral stairs
Until one day we will face our own self.
We wish to be like gods
on the First Day of the World.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
LAMENT
I asked the rivers – where are you?
I asked the clouds where you are, –
And the rivers said you are not on this earth,
And the clouds replied you are not in the skies.
Who will now comb my long hair?
Who will break me some yellow honeycomb?
The fields in the morning are cold and sore.
My hands are hot and empty at night...
Tell me the flower into which you will be born!
Tell me the wind in which you will come alive!
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
THE PEAR TREE
In my father's garden
A pear tree breaks into bloom
And turns to a mountain of snow.
And against it – small and secure,
Like a sheltered nest,
Leans the grey old house.
Under the care-worn roof
Our daily bread is shared
And truth – the bread is warm
And the house is filled with light:
Through one window flows the moon,
Through the other the stars look in.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
ANTIGONE
Farewell, my bridegroom – I have never kissed you.
Farewell, my son – who never was.
Love brought me here and love will show me out...
In trembling hands the flutter of a captive morning gust.
But I will come again.
A thousand times.
Across the desert sand,
the rain-soaked clay,
the firesites, –
I will be back.
To bury brothers in the dead of night.
I will come barefoot.
I will be unarmed, with empty hands.
The law which calls me stands above all laws.
And if – they curse me,
or ignore me,
Or have their courts condemn me for the thousandth time, –
I shall not be condemned.
And I will come again
and haunt them
as I walk the battlefield at night –
This salty crust –
in which
I bury brothers –
black and white.
A tyrant's shadow hovers heavy over land and sea
And names of slaves are scorched on our faces with the mark of shame, –
And thus – I must be back.
A thousand times.
To breathe the dark in which your body is enshrined.
To hold your helpless head.
To place the blade against your side.
Condemned a thousand times.
Your sister.
Your Antigone.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
THE EARTH AND HER PEOPLE
To us you are as indispensable as bread,
A sky-blue well of never-ending life,
A shelter built of birch or cypress logs,
A mother and a child to us you are.
And we so often kiss you and we curse you,
We are so ruthless
and so kind to you...
We are your dust, we are your soul and body
With all the imprints of the twentieth century.
We are your living joy, your living sorrow,
We are your honour, also your disgrace...
Enveloped in an apple-blossom veil
And laden with a load of bread and honey
You're flying to the Sun you cannot reach
But which is to be reached by us –
your restless dust, your soul...
...You, Earth, are an eternal song
and mystery to us...
Translated by Lionginas Pažūsis
ON THE THEMES OF M. K. ČIURLIONIS'
SONATA OF THE SUN
FINALE
The bell is mute. The silence rings.
The night entangles sunset's wings.
Star droplets on its cobweb rest.
A cry for rescue is suppressed.
The bell is mute. The sun has gone.
But earth glows like a red-hot stone.
The cowslips flow with yellow sound
And sunbeams every tree surround.
In cobwebs shrouded, on comes night.
The silent bell reflects no light.
Deep in your body flames still glow
Where streams of sunbeams ever flow.
Translated by Lionginas Pažūsis
* * *
Bygones cannot be bygones.
Only streets and squares
have forgotten the smell of fire.
Only fields
have forgotten the taste of blood.
Iron forsaken still bleeds with rust.
Bygones cannot be bygones.
Time's not a beast, it cannot
lick its wounds
with a rough wet tongue.
We bear its wounds within.
Hidden by casual chatter,
a silent pause, half-smile, half-prayer...
Hidden in a yellowing letter
or a visionary tombstone...
These wounds we hide with a baby's palm,
with our daily, unyielding routine,
with Chopin or Bach...
We wish they were soothed by a kiss...
They don't heal, though. They bleed
at the touch of a thoughtless hand...
And in peace now and then
they flare up as lively as roses
or poems...
Translated by Lionginas Pažūsis
THORN ETUDE
They left in boarded-up trains.
I escaped into a fairy tale.
Tanks rolled down the street.
I gazed at the birds.
From the forts billowed smokestacks.
I was tending grandmother's flowerbeds
which had just started to bloom.
The third time that I stood
at an open grave
I placed my faith in death.
As fountains of blood and fire spewed from the earth
and torrents drowned out the last bit of hope,
I planted a blackthorn in my window.
Begrudging a rock I compose fairy tales.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE
Today I saw you off
on your immeasurably long journey
To the other side..
To where you are now,
on the other side of the mirror.
On the other side of hope.
So much suffering must have had a meaning.
Everything has a meaning.
I don't believe that this small heap
of frozen February earth
is the end of a life.
Just one falling star
can light up the darkest night.
You always begged me not to die,
for how would you live alone?
Could it be that this agony
was meant to bond us closer than joy?
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
* * *
Bent over a white sheet of paper
I kept drawing the same picture:
a bright room, and seated around
the table father, mother, and
their happy daughter.
Stretched out on the floor was the dog.
(In this dream only the dog was real).
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
SUGAR BELFRIES
Such white December city, –
High sugar belfries.
Windows with silver birds.
And trees – like snow wormwoods
against the high clouds...
Such a festive city – almost unreal.
So white, –
as if there had never been
soot
or blood.
As if everything had been
absolved
and justified.
And nothing inscribed.
And everything still to come.
Still to come.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
* * *
With horror-filled eyes
we stared at the foreign tanks,
at foreign feet
stomping on our land,
heard a foreign tongue...
Through floods of tears
watched the boarded-up trains
in the old Kaunas railway station,
the crying, the screams.
And then,
night after night
the roar of engines
on our quiet suburban streets
along the Nemunas,
– which back then was
a clean and happy river. –
While we lay fully dressed,
next to our bundles of clothes and bread,
fully dressed,
next to our bundles of clothes and bread,
just waiting. –
Was it our turn?
This is how my childhood ended.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
* * *
To live is to yearn for eternity.
To plant a tree is to build a road
to that other world which
dwells inside us.
To drink love to the last drop
so it would linger a while,
to carry a fruit under the heart
so as to prolong the longing.
On a high high silver
lily
climb to the star
and there
in infinity
leave our signature
like a mark
that we are more than ants.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
* * *
I pray to stars and to grass.
To the sacred bubbling of a living spring.
I pray this evening for everyone, –
for the sainted, for the accursed,
for the righteous.
A savage bridge of conflagrations and gore
connects catacombs, inquisition courts
and concentration camps.
The mountain of ashes is piled high.
A gray evening. A gray bird.
This evening I pray for everyone.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
* * *
Holy June, month of fields,
touch the grass-scented earth
with pure fire of lightning.
Blossom out with a shower –
as a silvery rose
in the fields salted
with our sweat.
May it wash our eyes
to behold the glisten of grass,
may it wash our feet
to stand a long journey.
Holy June, month of fields,
bless our hands
so that streams would not dry,
so that trees would not die,
so that corncrakes would sing
on bright nights
in the field of oats.
Translated by Lionginas Pažūsis
* * *
To live is to long for eternity,
to plant a tree – to pave the way
to another world
which is in us –
to drink up love to the last drop
so to halt the fleeting moment –
to bear a child under your heart
so to prolong your longing –
up on a sky-high
silvery lily
to climb to a star
and there
in the infinite
to leave your footprints
as a sign
that we're bigger than ants.
Translated by Lionginas Pažūsis
* * *
I don't want to be writing poems.
Don't believe there's joy in that. It is false.
I would like to be kneading bread, or rocking a baby,
And carry my summer in crease-lined palms
All through the haymowing season.
And yet winds rock the streetlamps this evening,
And I walk the plowed fields in bare feet.
Life is palpable, like a scar,
And my star-filled nights, breaking into words,
Yield a bitter dew.
And it's in words the morning comes flowing,
With the pigeons loudly traipsing my ledge,
And a chill wind in autumn, where the shoreline roars;
With a smell of mint off the river, and a sunbeam
Perching on your shoulder like a bird
That flew right in through the windowpane.
And nothing will fit the words:
Neither black midnight's repressed cry,
Nor the red and violet asters picked at midday.
Everything you shove away into words will settle in the veins,
Both the dizzying spell and bitter aftertaste.
If I carry the small handful of snow
I dipped from a drift like a branch of cherry blossoms,
Don't think that it's easy to manage.
I don't want to be writing poems,
But the pencil in my hand vibrates to my heartbeat,
And there is no way back.
Translated by Vyt Bakaitis
GOLDEN APPLETREE
Cobwebs drape their skeins in the sun,
While the sun spreads through my body.
With the fruit heavy, tilting at noon,
Will you come set me free?
I'll lay the road in banners of silk,
Commanding a spring to bring us refreshment.
I'll stop the witch on the trail in her tracks,
Though my branches drag from the sun's weight.
0 the weight of golden apples!
Clouds dam up, back of the blue forests.
With the fruits scorching like beady suns,
Will you still come?
Translated by Vyt Bakaitis
LITHUANIA
I walked into the snowy midnight
to bow to the earth and to the sky.
And in that silvery point in space
where winds and ages meet,
the snowflakes fall and the seconds fall
on my hair, on my palms,
and they burn like salt
and fetter my feet
with white enduring ropes.
But I will not leave.
In this silvery point in space
where behind my shoulder breathe houses and trees,
where snowflakes and seconds sink
into my palms
and into my heart, –
there, in red letters,
silently, I shall write
in the snow
one name, that one name:
Lietuva
I walked into the snowy midnight
to bow to the earth and to the sky.
Translated by Gražina M. Slavėnas
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Janina Degutytė is one of the most beloved of Lithuania's poets. Her uncompromising eye took in the realities of life in Soviet occupied Lithuania, while retaining a lyric, romantic (in the better sense of the word) voice. Degutytė was one of the first newly emerged poets writing in the post-war period to be noticed by émigré critic Rimvydas Šilbajoris; his praise of her integrity, her poetic voice, caused her to be read in the émigré community years before many other Lithuanian poets. Born in Kaunas, Degutytė graduated from the department of history and philology at Vilnius University in 1955. She worked for a number of years as a teacher and as an editor of various literary publications. Her verse was first published in 1957. Degutytė made her debut as a poet of moral uncompromisingness and heroic spirit and had published more than a dozen collections of poetry until her death in 1990. Her poetry is charged with an emotional intensity and a dramatic concern for human existence. It is also marked by a romantic view of the world, improvisation in verse structure and emotional exclamatory phrases. She has perfected the verse-form of nature miniatures. Degutytė is also known as an author of several books of verse for children. |
