Vladas Braziūnas

stormy demons blew dust into my eyes the telephone will say nothing having lied for me, I am nothing even to you, and what is left behind - Virginia creeper, a worm, a squealing viper from your lips to the wall of ivy? I, kneeling before a pulsing vein of snake meat? vagrant guttural explosions of sighs and consonants? I grew deaf, I only heard: you are alone I remember the creeper winding: don’t grieve I will combine them with blooming Pompeii I saw her painted eye sockets but I did not hear Balnea vina Venus Corrumpunt corpora nostra Autem vitam renovant Balnea vina Venus* desert of the heavens, heaven of the inferno upward – downward sinking swings! from those who gather the final tribute I’ve hidden the cask, though I know: in vino veritas et mors, o ghost

enduring life, while water drips from the eaves when people are killed from behind their back to run and run without ease or plod step by step through fallow black short-lived as frosty ferns on window glass prolonged as a candle by my father’s bedside some unexpected thing should have come to pass as they walked, they walked through fire and ice until they broke through the ice, until they no longer ingest until they lacerated their feet, until they pared their skin until dawn, the dawns of tomorrows promised dripping dripping steadily steadily

1. Avižonis pits our mountains within we descend into pits no one to guide us from cursed Atlantis in the evening, crazed beer in orbits solar pan pipes – the wailing bones of those delayed by war our embankments are below we sink into pits while silence surges above hands will plant a cross 2. Pumpėnų street the street of my boyhood almshouse windows barefaced – my lone friends in hide and seek leaves of lindens, of books fallen into me your winds subside to cover them with snow and sleep a solitary memory – a street of crooked walls the grainy riverside sands smolder and begin to burn a one-traffic-light village to me, a child, you are an apple tree nearby an over-early light 3. Grasses in the almshouse yard grasses do not aspire, they bloom grasses bloom, silently there is unadulterated beauty in words a delivered chaste indifference the wayward lights of yore in the dooryard of the almshouse the spiny sprouts of wasteland grasses within my fondest memories the unenlightened are silent and they bloom the expectant listen to dreams they flow into the depths of stones into the almost frozen gloomy rivers

you will not escape perdition when the viscous fog congeals although you knew that vision’s brilliant finger would be to your eyes revealed wherein the grim family sits around a lantern dim dialect will be like father’s brim that hitherto I’ve heard within me

don’t say that day disappears as if into a sack you will wake and find it unchanged wounded, diseased, bound by sentences… albeit unfinished everything remains, everything passes even who you, tomorrow, will have been will be stained with blood and stillness even the marked foreheads of the chosen and silly youth, afflicted with cramps of wisdom, gone now for you regretfully, I watch last year’s grasses running along dilapidated tracks I will not overtake the seedlings or oily blossoms – o their sadness so profound I press my grizzled head to the rails and listen to their silence, I listen for sound

but the waters surge and wash your feet at every instant there is nothing new in the world it’s all a matter of birth and clan fire transforms into air and water will recycle before your eyes and not consult your desires and earth will be reborn through fire the earth is smoldering, smoldering while the infinite is ablaze and you, possessed by darkness admire a land of haze the wet and smoky fields the coolness of your hometown brook perhaps this flood is a gift from God fire and light?

I understood, that you were no longer here, in vain I climb the low steps of the old post office lived here?.. few have ever really lived here tomorrow will be the first day that the living live dying: fingers… pillows… lips… a wood carved angel on the wall playing with bookkeeping figures I can hardly see the fog: condensation on the window o the dreams – you approached there was a wind, your cold hands curled like innocent snakes and white breasts flinched under my palm an angry birthmark, gentle deception overtook me and would not let me wake the old wind swept up the leaves stood for a while, turned around and left

drink the lips, parted like wine’s firery depths, with forge-like edges the usury of handwritten existence cast it to the winds, let it go the nudist trees splash and storm up to their knees in autumn and we are most nude and beautiful in the ballad fires of blazing nights the morning of poppies from the edges of a dream the waking city rolls down the hill as its bars and churches spill on an unslept tousled head

wind rends leaves I rake them, we both are busy until winter

For Lesya Ukrainka listen to him who flinches from the slightest sound follow him closely, be vigilant and meek we talked – about what? about clear acacia honey about the quiet hours of work and rest about dimensions, eternity constantly dividing those who try to divide, but hopelessly, what will you fish out the ocean from a drop or gutter-pipe, from a dew-covered snow-drip breeze draft, light wind, waft – measured by what? perhaps we talked about him? time was already a thaw time blossomed, snowed, did not promise long years, did not discuss illness cooked preserves, read, translated poems, to treat tuberculosis of the bones traveled to Druskininkai, brought salt to Lvov, crystalized herself into classical salt – into a beloved city much like Vilnius, filled with hills and languages, and nations, a city of rowers, at times rambling through fog, at times stroking through sunlight, lost in dreams, the periodically sculling, at times transfiguring into merciful dew, none will understand salt or the lye of cracking calluses dispersed itself in my perforated bones and hair, turned into hoarfrost, romantically speaking, or more commonly – into grayness, turned into a growth on the little toe, into the Bee’s humpback, and still – into clear acacia honey