THE WIND

The wind strikes earth hard blows
And laughs like a buffoon.
He'll break the leg of those
Who won't dance to his tune.

Earth buzzes, earth's attacked –
A dying butterfly.
The wind is raving mad,
The wind tears out earth's eye.

Trees crash here, buildings there,
This boat's a drop at sea.
The wild wind does not care
where city is, or sea.

Translated by Peter Tempest



DEAR LITHUANIAN

My countryman, dear Lithuanian
Brought up in meadows and in leafy dales,
To lead a new life is my invitation,
A life loud with the song of radio-nightingales.

I offer you a long asphalted highway
With streetlamps to escort you through the night.
Forget all you have lost in forest byways!
New forests full of trams will hum for your delight.

Here every morning lorry and mill hooters
Such entertaining concerts shall provide,
You will no longer care who was it used to
Instil in you love for the countryside.

My countryman, dear Lithuanian!
Don't sulk if aeroplanes you cannot hear.
Remember how the carwheel crushed your father
The day his shy horse bolted, struck with fear.

The train will teach you that in sooty tunnels
Steel windows must be raised without delay.
And when you climb a tower at the top of it
Observe well what you have to do next day.

At four p.m. tomorrow cine-radio
Intend your Heavenly Father to present.
You'll be delighted and an Eldorado
Without a guide you'll find within yourself.

Translated by Peter Tempest



THE WAGON

Four gray wheels and two bay horses
Hasten up the hill;
A man's years are not accustomed
Ever to stand still.

Sunshine gilds the beasts and wagon,
Wheels and hoofs cut weeds;
Through the world speed on afleeting
A man and his steeds.

Whirling winds whine, wail and whistle
From a mountain bare:
Is that you, O Fortune, Fortune,
Standing headless there?

Four gray wheels and two bay horses
Speed the human load,
Up and down the all-observant
Silent serpent-road.

Translated by Nadas Rastenis



SPRING

The last day of April made her bed,
As whole forests of cloud, capsizing, swayed in the West.
With a moonbeam knife the night sliced
The loaf of the sky, porous with stars.

No herd of wild mustangs neighed in the prairies,
No Mississippi in flood swept away the towns;
A windmill, urged by the southwestern, rose like Christ,
A windmill grinding grain on another planet.

Filtering bird songs through a filter silence,
The thunder of Spring will reverberate before cock-crow:
May the birds then worship me like a lord,
At whose command the earth trembles from morning till night.

Translated by George Reavey



SPRING ORCHARD

Wind-tickled, the orchard
smiles blossoms.
Saw-toothed chestnut leaves
gape at the sun.

Apple trees happily
snap on their skirts:
petals stay on
or not, as they please.

And lost in a dream of lasting joy
the orchard turns white.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



LANDSCAPE

The roadside birches
are running a show
my heart wants to grieve over.
Geese have lifted off,
wild ones, so lovely
the mountains keep
their peaks beaked.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



BY THE SHORE

Echoing songs
My brothers sing
Fade on the plain;
Not these
Sea waves,
Alive in wind
And in quiet.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



THE MUSIC AT HEAVEN'S GATE

Sundown, the other side of the prairie
A blue-eyed sky

Night now in view as worlds
Around a star that's been delayed

White ocean brigades
Drift in along my heart's meridian
Like fighter squadrons from the next war

What kind of cloud fish
With their scales silver
Now adorn my crown?

This night the rye in my fields is like a ship
It floats

Night played a song
Song played the night

My eye lights played out

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



MY LOVE

You are lovely and great as Rome among its hills
Worshipped by firemen patrolling my conscience.
Storms unwind the darkening main roads
You come and leave by as history.

Tonight I barged in on your life,
Robbed the pyramids clean of a calm your eyes have,
And now I'm desire lining a coat made of space and time,
And the last common chord, when earth quakes and the sky trembles.

You are the wild bird's dream on a moonlit night,
Wheat blossoming in Manitoba loam.
When star ore reached boiling in the cauldron of the sky,
Two lovers appeared from the East 
			       and worked their way West.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



SUMMER'S TALE

A wind blows, and way off
Witches are laughing.
Rabbits in a summer meadow
Keep having doubts about the clouds.

Peas blossom.
The open well is heaven's shadow.
"There's no one begrudges you heat!"
Cornflowers tell each other this.

Scythes, swinging, sing.
Song of the field hands, gusting in
From beyond the horizon, means: Feet out from under
Another crop, somewhere.

"The sun is our bread,
The earth is princess of time"
Starts the brief tale, deep in the rye,
The poppies live to tell.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis



SONG OF BREAD

It grew dark.
The streets all blurred.
I went out.
And hunger
Was there to meet me.
All I saw was a dark blur,
Every city park
And then beyond,
One alleyway after another.

It's all the same to me, though:
Whether out in the fields
Or roaming the streets here,
I won't run into bread.
Yet bread is walking.
For some it even climbs up on the table.
While some even have extra, to go with the bread.
Most respectable Lady Bread,
What makes you so hot and crazy for my brothers?
Why the unending springtime of fat, brushing their lips?

O bread,
Why is the evening so sad?
Answer me.
For you are good.
For you are mother to both
Me and the one
Kicks you around and can't stand you.

O bread!
If you knew how I love you,
What illusions I put on,
You'd be rolling toward me,
Not in loaves
But moons and suns
Not the least bit smaller
Than the ones out there
In the so-called heavenly blue.

Why is the evening so sad?
Why is the wind whistling so loud?
Don't tell me it's whistling for the last time?
Don't tell me it's the sky falling?
Not the stars!
O no:
It's loaves of bread
Falling on my head!
It's glory and salvation,
The crowds coming
Out to greet me,
Their down-to-earth Universal Food Distributor.

A fair share for all:
One earth-size loaf,
One whole loaf each,
Each one the size
Of the earth.
Hosanna in the highest!
0 come, all you
In love with bread,
That everloving Cleopatra,
One hellcat of a Carmen.

That big round loaf
For each and every soul,
The biggest one there is,
To get up the courage and circle the earth with.
And thereafter, ever after, live
self-reliant
In splendid independence
From hunger and sadness
Who come to haunt us
Whenever
We want so much to eat.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis

Born in a peasant family in the village of Geisteriškiai, Juozas Tysliava went to secondary school in Vilkaviškis and from 1922 to 1929 studied literature and journalism at Kaunas and Paris universities. A member of the Four Winds, a Lithuanian avant-garde group, in Paris he joined an international modernist group and in 1928 published a multi-language journal Muba. In 1932 he went to the United States. His work was first published in 1918. Tysliava published volumes of verse, Will-o'-the-wisos (1922), In the Niemen's Embrace (1924), Into the Distance (1926), combined the traditions of integral lyricism with urban themes and a dynamic expressiveness.