DEAD EARTH'S ROMANCE

There has never before been 
a night lice this on earth.

Eyes are scattered in the heavens 
like deep, dead stars. 
The wounded wind flutters 
against the dead branches of trees, 
mute grass rocks heavily, faints, 
and melts.

Earth's travelers have never seen 
another night like this.

Constellations rattle like castanets 
in the murdered earth's depths 
where corpses turn pale 
gathered for death's festival, 
dancing with broken legs 
to an ardent bolero, 
to the erotic samba of the drowned.

The lost poet has never before visited 
a night like this on earth.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys
 


DAY INTO NIGHT

Take a sharp star with your heated eyes 
And sing a lullaby for the night's dead, 
High as sorrow 
Like the black Big Dipper.

Not returning to day hold 
Each shrinking step 
Hold it dearly 
As if pressing a loved one's hand to your heart.

That day you'll see 
Bent beyond the fractured hills 
Mankind in weary torment 
On the sparkling world's palm.

You'll remember each of your steps 
By the roadside, kneeling 
Before the coffin's high forest, 
Dry as a pine.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys



THE GRASS AND THE BONES

On one side of the road, people, 
on the other side of the road, people, 
on the road rides a gaucho, wide-pants horseman. 
People eat, people drink, people eat 
sheep and steers, people are fascinated 
by sheep and steers.

On the burned black grass 
lie ungnawed 
bones.

Translated by Jonas Zdanys



MAIOLI BLOOMS WITH POPPIES

Mountain slopes – amphitheatre, soldier – grey actor, 
decoration – cliffs and smoke, olive trees and blood poppies. 
We walk, dark wanderers, across life's crumbling bridges 
hungering for freedom and fortune like a pauper for his daily bread.

In Maioli are blood and death, Maioli blooms with poppies. 
The poppies are red as blood, with blood blossom the hills and fields. 
Long lines of corpses: in this common place of rest lie 
an Englishman, Frenchman, Italian, Indian, Greek and Pole.

(Those who fell forgot the war and know nothing, 
are lucky not to hear a moaning friend, the crashing of shells, 
Cairo, Mass Albanetta, San Angelo, Monte Cassino –  
died for them like dreams, as they themselves).

Bridges down, the markerless roads on which we march 
to Rome burst into rubble, smoke and dust 
choke the nightingale's song and the flowering cherry orchards. 
Friend, luckless as I, don't kneel or drop on the road 
even though weariness buckles your legs and the black nights fall. 
We do not need cantatas or hymns, pathos or lies, 
death and life are simple. We could wait no longer, 
our vagabond fate no longer dear. We need another end 
for night's Pompeii! We came here not to live but die, 
we carry the lava of the war Vesuvius onto tank and gun.

In Maioli are blood and death, Maioli blooms with poppies. 
With blood red as poppies we write the strange history 
and in our dreams of freedom shout: liberta vedi e muori!
 
Translated by Jonas Zdanys



AT THE BOTTOM OF AUTUMN'S ABYSS

When the spring sun was cast into chains 
And grim bars cut across the heavenly blue, 
I was ordered to drink the cruel night 
like wine 
and walk along the bottom of Autumn's abyss.

The tragic sky of a tragic epoch 
I carry about with me in my eyes, 
and however I try, my eyes cannot find 
the Future's shores that so bright used to shine.

It's too early, isn't it, yet for you 
to lie on a deathbed which autumn leaves strew? 
On your shoulders a load of chained springs you carry, 
and your legs bend under you, sore and weary.

The stoop-shouldered houses and leafless trees 
droop in silence and listen, intent, 
to the steps of the stranger from future days. 
They look in mute awe as they sway in the breeze 
at the passer's-by face so terribly sad, 
they look and they wag their bald pates.

The tragic sky of a tragic epoch 
I carry about with me in my eyes, 
and however I try, my eyes cannot find 
the Future's shores that so bright used to shine.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg



ROADWAYS

Ah, roadways, roadways! How many there are! 
They lead on to places 
both near and far. 
Some perfect, 
and others 
like slippery ice. 
They join – 
		then part –  
	to the left
		and right –  
	wandering to and fro –  
you go and you choose and you never know, 
with roadways all round you,
		which way to go.
Whether to go to the right, left or straight.
Or perhaps, just stop in the shade and wait;
You cudgel your brains,
		yet you never know –  
just roadways around you – 
		which way to go?

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg



DEAD ANGEL'S SONG

The moon I'm stuck looking up at
stares back, vaguely baffled. Trees
keep their branches of anguished expectancy intact
with their tops hushed in the stream. Flowers
once their lights are doused
lean in on themselves for total blackout.
People,
don't let this darkness come as a shock.
I stand here naked before you,
my bones white and jagged,
hollow-eyed black
skull frozen solid, rattling the hardened
teeth that gnawed a birthright from words.

I stand here before you,
a dead angel
whose wings disintegrated,
having fed on every fruit
from the tree of knowledge
in this realm of good and evil.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



SUMMER IS OVER

So then people got started
and piled up a real
wreck under the clouds.
There was a big holiday, with
sunlight and outbursts
in resounding glory. All to honor
both heaven and earth. And now
wherever you look, there's famine and mud.
Right before their eyes
they had pulled down the understructure of heaven.

So now we're on the road that speaks
only dampness and fog, a roadside char
with the dream shards of homeless squatters.

Will we get to say the word which will
serve as our rock, our fire to hold night back?
O night,

our bread and wine for the future,
yours is the senseless pain humans go through
when the game is over and a search for themselves
brings them to this place, where –
while everything still kept a fresh springtime look –
our summer came to an end.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



LOOKING FOR A NAME

What to call
the pain beyond words?
How to prevent the scream
danger has not yet exhausted?
Which way to guide your steps
when a darkness blowing bad luck
obscures the way and a heaven of stone
falls apart, brittle as sand?

Descending loud omens
bring the nighttime casualties
closer and closer to home.
A human soul stands nameless against this backdrop.
It's so hard to cram everything in!

When you're not allowed
to call wine wine,
bread bread, or
a stump a stump.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



QUATRAIN ON THE WAITING,
WHAT'S LEFT OF IT

It's true, there's no hope left,
only the waiting,

uncertain surmise
of perpetual night.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis

Juozas Kėkštas was born into a Lithuanian railway worker's family in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. His real surname was Adomavičius. Shortly afterwards his family to Vilnius where he lived and studied until 1938, when he began studies in Polish language and literature in Warsaw. His first book of verse appeared in 1938. After the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Kėkštas was arrested and spent four years in a concentration camp. Freed from the camp by the advancing Allied armies, he joined the army and was fighting in Africa and in Italy, where he remained after the war editing Lithuanian newspaper. He moved to Argentina in 1947 and lived there until 1959 when, in ill health, he returned to Poland. Kėkštas, who is credited for the emergence of the "psychological school" in contemporary Lithuanian poetry, published six books. His poetry is marked by tragic impressions of the war and echoes of modern Spanish poetry.