* * *

The sun still rolls over the earth –
How lovely, these last golden days!
The gossamer flies without wind,
And jacketless, I go to gaze
And stroll through my old native grove
In a medley of colour and shade.
(I remember how well at one time
The hazel bore fruit near the glade...)

These paths which in childhood I walked
With the grass of oblivion are grown,
The hazelboughs all broken off –
No more do I feel here at home.
The greenery doesn't seem real.
The forest's no longer the same.
So quiet it is, I'm alarmed;
My heart burns with cornel flame.

The past is already long gone.
What to me are these golden days?
The gossamer sticks in my hair,
On my songs its imprint it lays.
Although the sun rolls o'er the earth,
Its traces remain on the ground.
We, too, like the cornel burn,
We, too, brother, are autumn-bound...

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


MONOLOGUE WITHOUT WORDS

All's peaceful around on this late August night.
No worries, no cares do you seem to have
When stars start to twinkle, flashing alight.
There's Orion in the sky's centre above;
The Big Bear and others whose names I don't know
Are shining – a picture which I so much love...

At what, head thrown back, does the villager gaze?
Of what does the evening star speak to his heart?
Does he think of the days that will never return,
Like the son with whom once he was destined to part?
Does he hear how the cherry's dry petals fall down?
Will he live till new springs, till new petals?

		          Who knows?
(A ploughman he was – just a ploughman like all;
"The rye needs some rain!" he would say, I suppose.)
Ah, those starry blue nights still live on for him,
Still calling to him from those years full of woe,
Reminding of many a painful thing,
Which the grass of oblivion will not overgrow.
His dear ones are gone – all alone he's been left;
There's no one to take his arm when he's old;
His son was led off and engulfed by the war:
"Why didn't they take me instead? Ah, it's cold!"
He says to himself without any words:
"Now, why does that apple-tree bear no fruit?"
He still can't believe it: "Oh, Evening, say,
Can his bones really lie dead and mute, far away,
His grave all smothered by feathergrass?
If so, then shine on him as well without clouds
By the Nemunas that flows in the mist, still as glass,
Where the fields spread so smooth, long since left
			    unploughed."

And stroking an old pear-tree tenderly,
Though tears well up in his tired old eyes,
He goes to his cottage, relieved and free
Of the burden that drew from his soul heavy sighs.
In the cottage at last he lies down to rest.
"Ah, that I could die now in peace!" And he lies,
His rough hands laid crosswise upon his breast,
While Time towards the unknown future flies.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg

Born into a peasant family in the village of Noriūnai, in 1952 Vytautas Rudokas graduated from the department of history and philology at Vilnius University. From 1962 to 1970 he was poetry consultant at the official Union of Lithuanian Writers. His work was first published in 1948. Rudokas published ten collections of poems.