* * *

Who is it tossing Autumn's nets 
to the sunny riverbank
opposite?
Who is tossing nets
from large brown palms
onto sap-covered evergreen trunks?
What is it, grazing me gently,
at the palace of New Verkiai
while, following a tattered,
ancient map,
I search for a decrepit windmill?

Translated by Laima Sruoginis


ELIZA

Each morning
the Computing Center's computerist
sprays the garden's lilies of the valleys
with lily of the valley fragrance deodorant
while through the open Computing Center's windows
the computer plays
Liudwig von Beethoven's
Eliza.

Translated by Laima Sruoginis


THE TOWN GARDENER

Having bred the apple trees
the gardener falls asleep,
and the trees dream the gardener's dream
about the beautiful
lonely love of his youth.
And especially, just when
she comes through a green wall
no one may wake the gardener –
the cross-breeding would not take.

Translated by Laima Sruoginis


REFLECTION

a river trout
from the rushing river's bank
throws a glittering lure
into another universe
where
using a dull lure
a man in black rubber boots
fishes for trout.

Translated by Laima Sruoginis


* * *

		      close your eyes
		        you are gone
	      graphics drown you into another world
		     your white soul rests
		       over gentle skies
		        bright orchards
		          feeding bees
              eternity's bird disappears into a cover of maple leaves
		     the maples thick green
	            embraces you for eternity
		        close your eyes
            you will begin to talk to God about nothing
	     you will understand the language of birds
		          calm fingers
		       opening like a book
		       non-being's miracle
		         close your eyes
		        you will be gone

Translated by Laima Sruoginis


* * *

As if I were at the bottom of a well
I see through the water
my neighbor, still young,
walking a large black New Foundland dog.
He unties the leash,
and I see my wife,
petting the dog –
it were as if I had moved forward
wanting to feel the warmth between man and dog,
but I can't get to that spot,
because my path is crossed
by a little girl
eating an apple in the street,
and the scene moves off 
into the distance
as though the well had deepened
and light spreads through hollow space –
from far off a silent procession approaches;
my neighbor is stitched into white flags
taking the black New Foundland for a walk,
I see my wife
eating a red, glass apple,
and I am afraid to ask anything,
because I can no longer remember
which one of us is dead.

Translated by Laima Sruoginis


EVENING AT THE CURTAIN

I had thought it was enough –
I'll be silent for a while,
I'll scratch my memory with a nail
like a fly glued to glass;
that is all
it's so easy and I don't love anyone
I want neither to live or die
or even to dive
like a mossy stone 
into the stream of the present.
I don't want anything anymore
let the wind crush 
a leaf of grass
that came from the herbarium of my childhood
just like old age crushes 
yellow tobacco
with austere fingers.

All day long
I'll stare at the curtain
left covering everything
beyond my view,
beyond the covered window.

The evening is
like a carp fired in oil;
as if through ventilated panes
a bee-keeper's scrap hander full of holes –
Eliot's pierced druggy ether.

It is time to learn not to leave
where there is an insignificant silence on Boticelli
where the wind runs across bent tops
towards your fading childhood.
– Oh, miracles! –
which grow larger and larger until you are completely child-like –
until you wet your bed at night
dreaming
you are a cement boy on a fountain
with his cock spurting in the sun.
Then you dry
the yellow spot on your sheet with your body,
so your sister wouldn't see it.
In adolescence
you'll wrap the spot of blood on the sheet into a bundle, so your 
beloved could stay;
so your mother wouldn't notice it.
Gifts to the wind –
a seed on the loins,
on bent tops
bending towards the evening
for the roaring wind
so it would notice.

Dusk is voracious
it has swallowed my girl
on the other side of the curtain.

Ugly are Boticelli's women.
Their breasts do not throb
under your palm's life line,
which predicts nothing good.

One poet declared:
"God was a talentless artist –
in seven days 
for the sake of vain glory
he created graphomanic work".
Why the hell should we suffer only because
we are the fruit of a trick God played? –
Poo-poos
in a poo-poos shop
that is open only on weekends
selling for fake money
puppets
dancing
on the most foolish fool's ship."

I want to rebel
I want to draw the curtain
to get myself over to the side of memory,
which I forbade myself;
there I'd mend what I'd spoiled so completely
or I'd spoil even more while mending
as if in an old radio show
to see how irremediably everything can be spoiled.
The third brother, it seems,
has dove headlong into the well.
There he has found the world worthy of him,
has got what he lacked and has come back, he, the fool.
He has spoiled something so irrevocably,
that even on a summer evening,
fried in oil like a kosher meal,
rummaging through the folds of your memory,
you couldn't, not by any means,
see your girl,
waiting for dusk,
with eyes open towards the sky.

And then - what is left? –
to suffer quietly
as a thief would suffer
having stolen an icon from the church,
crushing it in rusty fingers,
calculating the scale and speed of the crushing,
sacreligiously glancing at the folds of the curtain,
waiting for the ether to take effect,
luring an image forward –
worn-out shoes on the road,
turned in the direction of return.

Translated by Galina Čepinskienė

One of the leading young literary critics and editors in Lithuania today, Liudvikas Jakimavičius is known for his sharp wit and good ear. Jakimavičius was born in Plungė, the lowland region of Lithuania, and is the author of one book of poetry, a number of plays and screenplays, as well as critical essays. He graduated from Vilnius University's department of Lithuanian Literature and Language, and the Music Academy's program for set design.