Vladas Braziūnas

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

a wind from God, golden, fragrant above the waters grizzling waves, dark gray clouds, through the crack the modest Capuchin’s bald pate, an ice lens refracts shafts of light and bends them to a pinpoint – protoplasmic flames blaze, flutter up to here life in leaps and bounds, the worm flapped and flew off the word slipped and rose on the third day the word was not with God, it struggled in the corrida with the bull, having stolen Europa from Lithuania the author spider legless crusader, don’t call him it will still proclaim, cooled on the balcony, will fly in on the naked broom of projectors the messenger from information’s inferno the unbaptized woodpecker’s variegation silver from time dead in the clock near the amber sea

I find it strange that this time I’m not driving and that someone drives me, that the landscapes change, for the time being familiar, the skies burst into bloom that prophecies remain far away, that it’s allowed to stray into remnants, clearly greater than the whole, to come or no longer coming, a bus rolls by short of breath, slow, toward your childhood brownish-green and blotted unscrutinized places, you’ll doze off, cut across the river the swamps lull to sleep, and swings swing and throw the young upwards, to see the highest mountain and the green woods, the bristled tails of fir trees stand stiff, and oak-grove of browned copper, it rained, it flashes, it drips it’s linden not hard rock hewn by your father’s hands hard blistered, it’s not the mortifications that remain but the calluses on your palms, betraying your origin in black earth, the clay, the blue potter’s clay not blood, wagtails in the hutch under the bridge stack up their old lives, and the new one only so much as there is hope remaining to hatch a young Maybird it didn’t turn toward town, the birch grove flew past with brooms of mistletoe, but perhaps it wasn’t that, perhaps it wasn’t my hunchbacked cottage, wet sheep grazing like a November leaf frozen and unredeemable life shivers by, a fishing line from below from the black depths tugged by a pale- lipped sticky mouth, it’s already Apaščia, from the fog from an unfamiliar customs’ station scrambles a would-be apostle, unconverted, leafs through papers worthy unworthy, doesn’t raise the gate, doesn’t assign a penance of prayers, and so, won’t make my beard Margeris, Peteris, Janis and Juris, I’ll fly a bit along my brimming sea, until they press down the small cross and near my name God’s red marker

three little cocks begin to sing into the sunrise man’s face a blossom in Dzūkija opens up and sets on the Nemunas’ race in the midst of Aukštaitija’s fields a table stands – linen and bread a scarf of windowed meadows girdles a figure’s abundant spread underwater paths of silty lakes on which the sunset man will ease a blossom floats in and lights up once more a star on the Aestian seas

we can already call autumn raising a foot above our heads autumn, from bells and from the field it will come home wreathed with flower wreaths, will sit at the table where we, grown sweet with exhaustion, will look at our heavy hands and the branchy evening will encircle us (in its shade I once listened to how it calls us, but not by name) the table will be covered with flowers and herbs and it will be indivisible, and our hours and days will be one and we will watch, grown sweet, how the bread knife unifies the bread

the days are oblong not unlike the fields the gray meadow lark your eye still yields you tremble and rave in human surprise the grain rolls away into paradise

the heavens flutter there and the waters gush like beer leap in that river the bellied bursting Pyvesa, the Lord’s round face shines and it and the meadows are happy as the hops weave round the young ox’s horns the hoops barely hold back the pressure the taps strain to shoot out hold this world, men, more tightly in your arms keep safe the spreading sprout the song to the heavens of that which just flutters and gushes where there never will be still more