E. C. §
they are voices frozen in the cave of an unknown silhouette with millions of bugs above the larva of the train
2002
Big Red £
extinction tales extinction numbers and services
what will this cucumber say?
the wind is a force
the wind is to blow through the ass
the 9th trolleybus gone
your destinys coffin arrived
2 x 2 and 5
without equality signs and description
what does poetry mean?
only extinction of the poetry text
only extinction as if it were final
a blaring live broadcast, mumbling radio
supermarkets take me, consume me
today everything's cheaper
everything save poetry
is cheap as a hoses skin
having donned it we only pretend
we no longer notice
poetry is eternal
eternity is built poetical
it was never to us inaccessible
the north wind the wind is to blow through the ass
through big love of the word prison
through big santa claus with his big nose
and massive sack
2010
In a Strawberry Field £
the phoenix doesnt burn
it falls into the sixth floor
decade
to visit us once more
returning from the idyll
of our nightmares, from this evacuation
age, who knows for what cause
written, for whom
sacrificed, we beat our breasts
filled with wind
fists of water circles
the city's star-map
with rust and ether
stains
eaten through this land
as what was promised
to someone
is later gifted to the astral tribe
resurfaced from a broken childhood
--- sport shoes with five-leafed stars
laurent kabilas and his brother's
mobutu killers --
the dark side of the moon
the rolling stones, the doors
behind all is a door
and then another and another
still --- the flame of the electric
guitar has jammed in the LP
left for a week, for turning
from territorial waters
from unconscious -
eternally young eternally last
poet
smashed into his first communion
into his first poem
into his last no mat
2010
He Makes That Which is Not £
he makes
he makes that which is not
he makes that which is not
what emerges from mist
scattering ashes
dragging the forest bank along the lake
with the moon
he travels by hot air balloons
filled with the gas
coloured by our blood
he is closer than the world
left now and then
we look into the bonfire - someone's
light there, it's going out
he does that which is not
what comes from a blank page
and the love, and death
and home
he hears the fearful nearness
of flying creatures
which block my ears
he hears whats not
which i dont notice
while sitting beyond the grass
eating hair of the stranger
and looking into the bowels of evening, luminous
as something slowly edging in there
(which is not)
2010
Sequoia Snowdrifts £
and then the night opens its eyes
and the falling snow darkens everything
which sheds light cranes on towers
burial fields of apartment blocks
faces in the fire of lingering
hearths and is falling and falling
like clouds from the charred forest
burned out cut down sent down
the drain, it filters into soil
to the weary minds to football
fields
falling and falling, disappeared
goals, names, the abyss
white snow wall--
white snow communion--
the white snow seed -- --
--
everyones quiet
dumbfounded
only a coyote
poet
only one
who somehow survived
in a great forest
blind and grey
no one knows how high
in the snows of sequoias
falling and falling
no one knows when it will finish
when the night opens its eyes
when it opens its eyes
when we
when
who
2010
God-Thing £
things are hanging in the air and fading
linking the ground, where the city
is deleting any connection
overwriting the memories
its restoring
nobody's forms
caught by the rain and unknown wind
it does nothing, it only expands
growing inside for us underground
things are hanging in the air
and breeding
as if they never were here before
or as if they'd grown out of some sporadic microdream
sneezed out by indigenous races
spit out to the grass
the roots growing from fruit
things are hanging in the air
and we are very close to weightlessness
we are talking over distance, breathing from afar
into self, which exist
in entirely different geographic milieus
in the mass of burning phenomena
in the pit of the cold light
in the denouement
the self-destroyed god-thing
in the mass of burning phenomena
in the pit of the cold light
in the denouement
the self-destroyed god-thing
2010
North Isle (In the West Bank) £
lead toy soldiers are being poured out
milk-white lead toy soldiers are pouring down
doves use them to water
our days buried in
unwarm concrete rue-gardens
laid down in the lights night
heads to the north
faces to the west
bound eyes
stabbed hands
let it be
bluish flames from mount olive
meets them
the anger of the indifferent meets them
and the cruelty of the disillusioned
also thousands of those
engaged in what will be done
by their hands
by their eyes
they will repeat
let it be
bluish lava of the dead sea
fills our heads
let it be your faces and thoughts
you wear
worn out in revenge
and in the west bank
north isle will rise
2010
Pinocchio Head (The Fire in the Spit) £
i woke up
as if scraping myself
off the aged paper
as if autumn would echo the fall
of the layering geese
through a lazy
and shorter
than usual age:
lessening i
to undecipherable
with hands of wormholes verse libre
in the burning bushes -
a pinocchio's head
2010
The Clamber €
the eyes restored by muteness
to the wind driven by mist
in an occured cold
on this side of the pole town
i saw this in the ice
above the frozen pond
on its snow covered surface
there are footmarks skittled (throwed out)
the language of all the quick of the world
and dismal shadow of metallic
clamber near bulrush
a four black circles in that place
where the other kind of seeing is starting
and words sunken already
into a sludgy break (use old word for the airhole in the mere) of the pond
wading in four legs into the time of suppression
(now it is clear - its the loss of the memory)
red rectangulars of things cleaned out in the snow
the tongue freezed on the metal of syllables
2009
Eternal Light ¥
everything that surrounds you
a house for your habits
acorns
in the park of statues
you hear them fall down
these are the dead
going around the leap of the fire
torn out by someone
as soon as the weather got warmer
now the windows are covered with ice
under the ice
there are people of marshes
watching the clouds
moving all over the surface of snow
in the pace of a fisherman
their drying eyes
glow like ice-holes
the trails
guiding them forward
towards the pond
which is a residence for the critic
of all the possible things
nobody knows
whether the tongues of heat
leap in the shelf for his words
or just the two nails for your spangles
why do people live?
just for someone to note down
it is them
that got stuck in their things
theyre not living here
with ice in their eyeballs
shine in the sun
like a clock
why has the time been invented?
so as things that surround you
were divided in parts that were equal
in the centre of their interior side
there is a little white statue
representing a tramp
nailed down in his house
on the shelf in his toilet
hes not shining
hes glowing
when the lamps are switched off
when the ice-holes of lives seen long ago turn on
when the dead
bound themselves to the land they got as a present
go away on their skis
circling all around the ponds
with some hope
some offences
some fury
with their usual daily distress
with the stems of calamus frozen in ice
with the faces of inula
with a fire of an eternal star figure
torn out in the city park
after that
all at once
the weather got warmer
2006
Hollow Obscure ¥
i am a father to myself
i was one
before i became him
mother?
who fed me when i was still sucking
by getting my milk from a dream
from the streets and the ghetto
that gave birth to this noise
i am a mother though
i fail to recall
any kind of coition
a pang that has brought all of us
to the thick certainty of the fog
i am a brother of my own
a sister and brother to the other
woman i cant recognize
(i have seen her one time)
i am
a baby of my own
conceived
in a sleepwalking dream
i do not know
when this life will come to its end
how will this kind of me disengage
from the world of his close ones
from the shape of his distant ones
hollow
obscure
axis denied
2006
§ Translated by Kerry Shawn Keys and Edgaras Platelis
£ Translated by Edgaras Platelis, Jake MB Levine
€ Translated by Gerrie Fellows
¥ Translated by Aleksandra Fomina
Some poems appeared in:
Up and Coming Young Lithuanian Writers. Vilnius: Books from Lithuania, 2006
(Eternal Light, Hollow Obscure);
Betoniniai triušiai. Dievas-Daiktas / Live. Vilnius: Eureka, 2010
(Big Red,
In a Strawberry Field,
He Makes That Which is Not,
Sequoia Snowdrifts,
God-Thing,
North Isle,
Pinocchio Head)
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