Vladas Braziūnas
Translated by Jonas Zdanys
<br/>One Full of Beauty
your mountains are too slippery, licked by clouds
but, thank God, not too beautiful
that swanfeathered cloud’s kitsch
mirage of white churches
a not-too-beautiful deer near the lake
drinking moonlight
thank God also not too beautiful
not more beautiful than your soul
Lipica–Ljubljana–Warszawa–Vilnius, 2005.IX.11
Skirmantas Valentas
<br/>Lingvistinis Vlado Braziūno stebuklas / The linguistic miracle of Vladas Braziūnas
Valentas, Skirmantas. Lingvistinis Vlado Braziūno stebuklas // Colloquia. – 2012. – Nr. 27. – P. 27–40. – Prieiga internetu (žiūrėta 2013.I.2): http://www.llti.lt/failai/str_S_Valentas%2827-40%29.pdf
„Lingvisto Skirmanto Valento ekspansionizmas į literatūros mokslą jau kelintą kartą pasiūlo drąsias, kūrybiškas interpretacijas. Šįkart jo poetinės kalbotyros tyrimas skirtas „lingvistinio stebuklo“ sampratai ir jo apraiškoms dabarties poeto Vlado Braziūno kūryboje. Beveik algebriško lakoniškumo stiliaus straipsnyje Valentas atskleidžia poeto polilingvizmą – giluminę kelių kalbų sinchroninę koegzistenciją lietuviškai parašytuose Braziūno eilėraščiuose.“ – Sprindytė, Jūratė. Pratarmė // Colloquia. – 2012. – Nr. 27. – P. 9. – Prieiga internetu (žiūrėta 2013.I.2): http://www.llti.lt/failai/Pratarme27.pdf
Valentas, Skirmantas. The linguistic miracle of Vladas Braziūnas: summary // Colloquia. – 2012. – Nr. 27. – P. 40. – Prieiga internetu (žiūrėta 2013.I.2): http://www.llti.lt/failai/str_S_Valentas%2827-40%29.pdf
„The linguist Skirmantas Valentas’s foray into literary analysis has once again resulted in daring and creative interpretations. This time the object of his poetic-linguistic investigation is the concept of the “linguistic miracle” and its manifestation in the work of the contemporary poet Vladas Braziūnas. In an almost algebraically laconic style, Valentas reveals the poet’s polylingualism – the deep synchronic coexistence of several languages within Braziūnas’s (Lithuanian) poems.“ – Sprindytė, Jūratė. Foreword // Colloquia. – 2012. – Nr. 27. – P. 11. – Prieiga internetu (žiūrėta 2013.I.2): http://www.llti.lt/failai/Foreword.pdf
Vladas Braziūnas
Translated by Ada Valaitis
solitude and wine
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
Vilnius–Fabijoniškės, 1992.V.20–1996.V.2
Vladas Braziūnas
Translated by Ada Valaitis
<br/>surrounded
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
Versta 2010
Poetinis Druskininkų ruduo 2010 = Druskininkai Poetic Fall 2010 / sudarytojas ir vyriausiasis redaktorius Kornelijus Platelis = Compiler and editor-in-chief Kornelijus Platelis. – Vilnius: Vaga, 2010. – P. 41.
Vladas Braziūnas
Translated by Ada Valaitis
<br/>Pasvalys
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
Fabijoniškės, 1997.II.11–X.20; versta 2010
Poetinis Druskininkų ruduo 2010 = Druskininkai Poetic Fall 2010 / sudarytojas ir vyriausiasis redaktorius Kornelijus Platelis = Compiler and editor-in-chief Kornelijus Platelis. – Vilnius: Vaga, 2010. – P. 41, 43, 45.
Vladas Braziūnas
Translated by Ada Valaitis
<br/>dialect
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
Fabijoniškės, 1997.IV.2–XI.23; versta 2010
Poetinis Druskininkų ruduo 2010 = Druskininkai Poetic Fall 2010 / sudarytojas ir vyriausiasis redaktorius Kornelijus Platelis = Compiler and editor-in-chief Kornelijus Platelis. – Vilnius: Vaga, 2010. – P. 45.
Vladas Braziūnas
Translated by Ada Valaitis
<br/>narrow gauge railway
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
Lielupe–Rīga, 1988.XI.I7; versta 2010
Poetinis Druskininkų ruduo 2010 = Druskininkai Poetic Fall 2010 / sudarytojas ir vyriausiasis redaktorius Kornelijus Platelis = Compiler and editor-in-chief Kornelijus Platelis. – Vilnius: Vaga, 2010. – P. 45, 47.
Vladas Braziūnas
Translated by Ada Valaitis
<br/>the flood
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?
Vilnius–Maskva, 1989.V.14; versta 2010
Poetinis Druskininkų ruduo 2010 = Druskininkai Poetic Fall 2010 / sudarytojas ir vyriausiasis redaktorius Kornelijus Platelis = Compiler and editor-in-chief Kornelijus Platelis. – Vilnius: Vaga, 2010. – P. 47;
Zei şi zile = Days and gods: Antologia Festivalului Internaţional „Nopţile de Poezie de la Curtea de Argeş“: ediţia a XV-a, 2011; Poesys 15, plurilingv I / Antologie, biobibliografii şi tălmăciri de Dumitru M. Ion şi Carolina Ilica. – Bucureşti: Editura academiei internaţionale Orient-occident. – P. 117.
Vladas Braziūnas
Translated by Ada Valaitis
<br/>* * *
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
Fabijoniškės, 2003.IX.5–9; versta 2010
Poetinis Druskininkų ruduo 2010 = Druskininkai Poetic Fall 2010 / sudarytojas ir vyriausiasis redaktorius Kornelijus Platelis = Compiler and editor-in-chief Kornelijus Platelis. – Vilnius: Vaga, 2010. – P. 49.
Vladas Braziūnas
Translated by Ada Valaitis
<br/>* * *
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
Versta 2010
Poetinis Druskininkų ruduo 2010 = Druskininkai Poetic Fall 2010 / sudarytojas ir vyriausiasis redaktorius Kornelijus Platelis = Compiler and editor-in-chief Kornelijus Platelis. – Vilnius: Vaga, 2010. – P. 39;
Zei şi zile = Days and gods: Antologia Festivalului Internaţional „Nopţile de Poezie de la Curtea de Argeş“: ediţia a XV-a, 2011; Poesys 15, plurilingv I / Antologie, biobibliografii şi tălmăciri de Dumitru M. Ion şi Carolina Ilica. – Bucureşti: Editura academiei internaţionale Orient-occident. – P. 116.
