WINTER

From grief, my amber homeland,
O land of rue, from woe
You'll dance. You'll dance a folk-dance
At the tavern by the road.

Hundreds of buses pass here,
In my eyes you'll be white.
Winter will hold you fast here,
Bridelike, in silver ice.

Sisters are linen weaving
From threads of woe with skill.
Mother is bitterly grieving
For a son dying in Brazil...

Father his soul has mortgaged.
"In misery I go,"
He says. Yes, I'll dance also
From the bitterness of your woe.

Come spring though, down the river
We'll sail to the bright blue sea.
If happiness fate won't give us,
Grief won't catch you and me!

Translated by Peter Tempest



MELODECLAMATION

The trains are leaving with a screech of metal.
My grief too leaves along the telegraph wires.
My thoughts are all of you, my snow-white petal,
My far-off darling whom my heart desires!

No doubt you  will have heard that, high waves riding,
White ships are sailing, tossing on the main,
And on a far-off shore two palms the face are hiding
Of  a mother who shall never see her son again...

The waves I'm watching of the Golden Nemunas,
Beside the Nemunas here I stand today:
I don't recall the sins of other people –
They're all welcome to heaven, I would say!

The trains are leaving. And they are returning.
Grief too returns. As do the telegraph wires.
But you, it's only you are not returning,
My far-off darling whom my heart desires!

Translated by Peter Tempest



SNOWFALL IN SPRING

It's so gracefully snowing today: 
Snow-white blossoms unceasingly fall. 
Just like that my first love died away 
With its passionate vows once for all.

Weeks ago, when the spring was still raging, 
Driving ice-floes along all the streams, 
My love died in the arms of a stranger 
While I whispered her name in my dreams.

A full moon climbed the sky still higher 
Shedding silvery light on the grass, 
Yet my love was so quick to expire 
Like a small golden fish under glass.

I recalled the sad end of a tale
Once I read overwhelmed with gloom 
How a maiden from fear turned pale
When exchanging gold rings with her groom.

It's so gracefully snowing today:
In the park snow-white blossoms fall,
But my love quite by chance slipped away
With its rose-tinted charms once for all.

Translated by Lionginas Pažūsis



AUTUMN

All night I dreamed white canvases
And could have gone far. But today
I suffer autumn's ravages –
Both birds and friends are going away.

And yet the earth was decked in green
And hills bore flowers of many a hue.
Now all are in great haste to leave –
Friends leave, birds leave ... and girls leave too.

Down by the river I observe
Just upturned boats now line the shores.
I watch the whirlpool. While the birds
Go flying, flying without pause...

It's not for me – the sun's sweet boon.
I'm lost, in deep distress I frown.
There someone leaves to Chopin's tune.
Meanwhile more leaves come fluttering down...

Translated by Peter Tempest



LIKE SNOW, LIKE MUSIC

Like snow, like music, and like blossoms,
All things on earth, like echo, fade away;
And so does the youth of twenty, burning
To set the seven seas aflame.

Our dream was to improve the world,
Create a vast, immortal happiness.
Such was our thought, but little we suspected
That we had irrevocably lost the way.

How do they feel, I wonder, who have the knack of living
Or reposing on the seashore near white villas?
But what can I sing now when the heart
Is tired, disillusioned, almost? ...

Do the seas, the springtime, and the cherries
In blossom, astonish us no more?
I know too well where we are going,
Where we are floating, and what it is we seek...

Like snow, like blossoms, and like women,
All things assume a gradual pallor:
Like a willow stranded on a hill, bent
All day long by winds, one stands alone.

Translated by George Reavey



SPIDER IN CONFINEMENT

The dinky corner spiderweb
Has a faint new mildew shimmer.
Too bad, it shows no sign of life
Beyond just hanging in there.

I try to think. Grappling with thoughts
My heart can't come to terms with,
I'm scatterbrained at best, namely
As solitary as I'm meant to be.

But here's a tiny spider on the run
As if from prodding. You, too! Well,
I may be sealed inside my grave already,
But what got you this deep inside the KGB?

It's good for me to have the two of us here.
We'll perish as a pair and rot together.

In my extended dark confinement,
I can't tell what the time is;
Probably dusk by now.. Still all right,
When spiders show while there's some light.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



GLORY TO THE VANQUISHED
(A Monologue)

Do not make me feel small. Stop making searches.
Don't keep frisking me.
Can't you believe me?
I have absolutely nothing.
(Not in my mouth, not in my pockets, not in my armpits.)
Apart from that: worn down a bit
by the world
I feel.

And you? Drunk, it seems.
My heart still has its blood,
The thin-spun nerves in my head
Free of moss ...

What's mine I keep inside the heart, mind
And imagination.

And yet, nothing my heart and mind come up with
Is for your inspection: you have no power here.

All that might be holy to me
I cannot keep from saying.

(Otherwise, I'd not survive another day.)

But you are the ones who manage without song.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis

Born in a peasant family in the village of Juknėnai, Antanas Miškinis graduated from the arts department of Kaunas University in 1935. His verse was first published in 1925. In 1929 he joined the group of Neo-Romantics in the journal Pjūvis (Cross-section). His books of verse, The White Bird (1928) and Ravens by the Road (1935), created a new kind of Lithuanian poetry based on a synthesis of ironical romance and elegic hymn. A bright range of countryside imagery dominates his verse collections.