Margita Gailītis 

Übersetzer:in

Leaves frost-bitten by a harsh night rustle between my fingers.
A rook siddles closer
to a cross painted mud-colour. A white pebble thrown against
the cheap granite slab summons an echo
of your voice. Here, fired by the passion and politics of lovers,
all transactions take place more swiftly
than in a market. An echo is like the sound of salmon spawning
as they rub their dulled backs, just more audible.
But one pigeon cock thrusts its beak straight into the heart
of another pigeon cock.

The grave-keeper Valerie smells of vodka and a paranormal life
under piles of leaves.
Although she grasps money with purple hands, it seems
more like she does so with yellowed chalk lips.
In the sky the clouds congeal into lumps
just like synthetic pillows in cheap hotels.
The hanging chapel key jangles in the Baltic wind like the money bag
of a wealthy man,
now we’ll gnaw on baranka holes, while the leaf kopecks
madly race among the crosses.

In nether land, where one’s place is shown by the pointing
of a shovel’s handle, a handful of sand and a sob,
time digs down to the bone of bones and rejects whatever
was once kissed and offered up to the angels
At the foot, black-candle cedars now have fossilized.
Grieving accidentally, one grows vigilant.
Suddenly too tangible is non-existence, which can be so easily
approximated. My mouth is full
of salt pebbles, when I try to remind you of my name.

The ones who don’t belong love non-belongers. Love more.
Awkward city noises wake sleeping monsters
in beds of threatening size, in which through barred windows
dark and light flows in, kindling beastly passion
but the ones who don’t belong love the non-belongers. Love more.
In the corner behind the four-door wardrobe forgetfulness hums.
Turning over greasy pages in the family calendar
with thrifty recipes, descriptions of insects, photos,
down-to-earth advice, perhaps how not to die before one’s time.
The ones who don’t belong love non-belongers. Love more.
Forgetfulness has a werewolf’s countenance. With a dark blue
tongue it examines, examines once more all the facts.
A specially-numbered year thousand nine hundred and sixty
on the cover of the book which smells of Dachau’s gas.
Those who don’t belong love non-belongers. Love more.
In late autumns they love when slimy leaves cover front windows
of cars, muddy floors, raisins of sweat on palms,
they love by the sound that wrecks the nerves of silence,
they love with the plump coal, which, when pressed forcefully,
draws squiggly features on midday rest’s golden skin.
“Hello werewolf!” The holidays behind the barred windows
do not belong to us. “Keep your pain to yourself.”
Those who don’t belong love more.

Farewell, homo mediocris! We dream and sleep still among roe
subtly rose. So slow their movement, so sticky. As if someone
will come shortly to glue our transparent flesh together.
We can do it ourselves! Just the water doesn’t permit it,
which is always above us when we’re awake.
I remember poorly, but now and then it dawns in my mind
that we met in a large city where giant royal schrimp were just
a vulgar appetizer for the locals, and in the red-hot streets,
where noble moors, earth sons, thundered
their drums of brightly polished steel.
The air was full of sweat and a blue-sky salt arrived by mail
in unaddressed evelopes. We opened them, licking salt
but never feeling sated, while the waiters lined up still more
and more letters on the table. You asked: “Do you recognize
the sender?” To which I answered: “Yes.”
Hummingbirds wound nests in my hair, but our arms were like lead
when we tried to touch each other. Imprisoned in space and time,
we swung only our heads, where in the grey matter feathers
ingrown like antennae decorated us.
You said: “The transmitters have been turned on. Can we tell
the clouds about molluscs and flames, about humans
and inaudible songs?” But the sound of the drums was too loud.
Around us cannon fodder was decaying.
I couldn’t hear you.
We continued to swing our heads slowly. Soon centuries grew black.
I still recall vaguely, but it seems, a strange human flew by us.
His head was larger than earth’s girth. And in his teeth echoed
knots twelve.

A roadside garden queen boards the train Aizkraukle – Riga.
She’s wearing rubber boots, a grey moustache
above a chapped mouth.
Carrying a bagful of cucumbers, the roadside garden queen
is exhausted but in her bag are her own grown cucumbers,
a splendid variety.
“Could I have left the rake between the garden rows?” She worries.
Her eyes sink deeper into their hollows as she tries to remember.
The neighbour’s dog often comes into her garden to do his business
and, in doing so, tramples her asters, now and then,
the strawberry plants.
The train wagon is not full. Its bedraggled state somehow suits
her rubber boots and sweaty toes shoved in them.
The roadside garden queen suddenly knows that the wagon
and her boots are one and the same. Her legs are
the train’s passengers.
The most important thing is that the wagon is very clean.
She has never understood what the words ‘nerves’
and ‘pedicure’ mean.
Slender birches race past the wagon windows.
The roadside garden queen notices a student sitting nearby.
In his lap a book. The boy, well-dressed, is catnapping.
The station Gaisma with its piles of coal races by.
The roadside garden queen’s eyes crawl out of their hollows
like a squirrel’s offspring, beasties dazzled by too much light.
But the old woman continues to gaze at the student
who reminds her of Stephan once-met.
Stephan, a young soldier, taught her three thousand
or so variations of kisses in the woods after a dance.
She recalls the infinity of Stephan’s kisses.
Infinity, which tasted of boot black and barrack fare.
The summer days then were much like today: a green,
fragrant gruel, but nights transparent like a black nylon stocking.
The roadside garden queen’s lips move.
Cramps in her toes protest against benevolent fate.

Come, life’s winter! In a corner of a window ledge a titmouse
pecks at a bit of bacon
whiter than the city’s snow. Lemon yellow sunbeam bagpipes
tangle in tree branches sounding funeral marches. Racing clouds
stick to the sky like cookie crumbs to a sick man’s mouth.
The crunchy bugs of love’s slag crawl over a letter that possibly
was written by God. Over the A4 format page courses ideal
handwriting, chains of words without memory. They slowly
are warmed by the letter’s reader, a captive, his body warmth.
He, involved, follows letter by letter, understanding not a word,
just listening and listening to the soundless rattle of chains.

Come, life’s winter! When the titmouse will flutter away
from homing glances and the cold will be such that words will freeze
into icicles and all the sweet,
demanding mouths shall grow larger for the word mamma, when
the letter will be blizzarded into infinite snow and we’ll sleep
exploded and naked in the midst
of this landscape as part of the handwriting, as the letters
from which days and nights and the titmouse’s bacon are woven,
then winter will come to save
the captive and one more time, awkwardly gurgling, will create food,
smoke from the crematorium chimney, applause, motors, tar,
tenderness, alcohol, dirty streets, a puppy, breath,
Christmas stamp colours, this year’s first icy snow crust.

You say to me – summer? Stop! Too much of glowing flesh, glassy
grey light on eyelids, the odour of decaying melons. Maybe
a movie, ditam, ditam? Dipetti, dipetti, perhaps to the Antarctic?
Don’t be angry. Escape heals, but only for a space of time, just until
the blood blackens and medusa stratas layer the hourglass vessels.

Afterward, as you know, the sand returns in us,
so we may slave further.

Who shall say where we should head? The streets shall lead
further than our own seemingly sure steps. The grainy asphalt
rugs will weave into themselves the coat-of-arms
of cast-down glances, the tense light
of a walker’s muscles, the Indian ink
shed by shadows. The city will wallow fevered, it will beg
its inhabitants to call a doctor.

In hair locks shed around a hairdresser’s high heels, recently-bought
a baby carriage, glances, which meet suddenly and swell
like an edema – this is where time lives. Who will instruct us
where we should head?

On a sultry afternoon in a market from a butcher’s counter
a snow-white elbow accidentally knocks down an hourglass.

Fine glass slivers slash summer’s juicy veins.

Now you see how new rhymes are born –

a short-sighted uncle holds the world by a thread,
five-year old Wolfgang conducts a pollen ballet,
cranes feed their cranelings,
ore becomes ore.

I wake suddenly from deep sleep.
In the forest’s undergrowth my shadow roams.
Hundred-thousand-year greedy muzzles suck
moisture clinging to a vessel of mist.


Like a large wet green tea leaf
the sky swims into my eyes – the narrows
do not frighten it. Star ships
nestle close to me, the wreck.


I don’t know what the beasts will tell me,
don’t understand why my visitors are silent.
I was your key, the new wine
that the devout locked away in dark barrels.


In a trance the dark breathes, dissolves,
casts in my features other reflections
of other bygones, other lives
and then inside a large part of me dies.


I suddenly wake from a deep sleep
as the grains of your hail erode my face.
Someone in an owl’s voice says: God
but your hand is empty, empty.

This is the last barricade, firing line, red zone.
Across it
We no longer shall stand hand in hand
Neither friend nor deputy nor drinking pal.

This is the last day, last sentence, last chance.
On the boundary the word we shall burn.
The word you won’t make it through fire.
Only they will remain.

Tonight let’s sit on our baggage of reason,
On the backpacks of our sense of honour
Let’s count the small change of our life
Needed to reach our destination – or return.

Let’s sit together till the morning.

From the centre from silence
From the very core
May it reach you and sink
In the deepest sense

After which I’ll start to say
Before which I’ll stop to say
The word I forever search for
And never shall say

I’m not conquerable I’m not destroyable in the open
Field trampled cursed and spat on
Don’t look at my bones that ever slower
Walk under my skin but if you wish to look perhaps
This is a lesson listen to my words listen
Listen hear listen again but listen
Because my words are my work and other work I don’t have
I won’t have
A battle in life in which I’ll be the loser because
I don’t have either a bayonet or war ruse only words
I place in the centre in the most open place to root after
A year or two hundred what does it matter? If right now or
After seven ounces of sweat what does it matter?
My bones aren’t worth a penny because I have words and they’re
Not janis’ peter’s or knuts Skujenieks words these WORDS are
Human
If you want to look balance bones on elbows or
Put your foot in front but a word is a word even forgotten
It leaves echoes in the forest circles in water and peoples’
Discord with life and themselves
Even the most vulgar word the most bitter word is human
Not for me to know nor you where these words come from
Or where they go
And our lack of knowledge keeps us alive indebated to death
Our being
So listen hear beside me root

If a fish were a violin
would you fish out the violin
knowing beforehand the violin would die?
It shall die
but nonetheless in your hands
for a moment its sound
shall not subside.

But, as you well know, a violin is not a fish.
Although – who really knows this for sure.

A lead swan swims in the black wound of a canal.
It swims and doesn’t drown under the northern blue swell.
A lead coffin in the shape of a swan sways in the waves.
The wind with its palm caresses a green lawn’s unkempt wool.
In the lead coffin lies a swan – it is white like a swan is.
White like twelve constellations of stars piled in a heap.
It swims and doesn’t drown and won’t drown ever again.
The year of ashes, year of the devil and of the diamond shall pass.
Once more a swan will swim in the black canal.
Lead swan, on dying, where will I ever be laid to rest.

When people shall read this bitter intertwining
these words not called nor begged for
and think of what created them
whom will they reflect more? You or me?
when people shall think of a soul so lonely
who even powerless can light up a sunbeam
should they say fine the world still has sunbeams
will they know what feeds the sunbeam?
I myself don't know my beloved
you the distant hollow sound of a bell
I don't know but I sense you
and send another line on paper
you tremble like air from the flutter of wings
over my hopes and my sadness
we may separate like low clouds
but we don't wake cold and estranged
for others we may deny each other
but we don't pass each other by
we may be bitter about life's betrayal
but we're chained not only by love
from common refuse we burn the same fire
from a common spiritual fibre
if you should tire know that people will read
again and again ask for the sunbeam
and intertwined we are related
I sing of you while you lead me
your breath in each letter
half of it me

Clear-eyed kitten
from the kingdom of tom-cats
when you climb on my shoulder
then I know I am
a needed man

small foolish one
you disarm even a stone
and soften
the stone in my breast
the two stones of my right eye and my left eye
the one on my tongue

time will turn
you into a bored and crippled tom
and me into stone again
but not altogether

because the kingdom of tom-cats is large
and the birth rate exceeds the death rate

With both feet planted into the horizon
A red rider wanders
Visibly ages
Fades faster than a flower
Oh!
He doesn’t know how to talk to people
Oh!
The horse does not recognise him
Oh!
Hearts
Seeing the rider
Slowly slowly tear

Don’t search for the world’s guilt
Don’t expect the bloody comet
The comet won’t help us
Friends will still be destroyed
Revenge will still be enemies’
But we’ll still be in the middle
Only the comet’s tail will pierce our hearts
But we’ll still be in the middle
And the world will still be not good not evil
Neither cold nor hot without shame without honour
Let’s leave the sheets in the bed white
Let’s not prepare to be blown into air
The comet shall return to its parabola
But we’ll still be in the middle
On the bridge
If we haven’t prepared our floodlights
For each to return to his own parabola
And the world will stand still mindless and clueless
And we’ll still be empty on an empty bridge
With a comet's tail piercing our hearts
If we won’t blow ourselves up into our air
If we ourselves won’t go through our hearts
The comet will remain just an empty newspaper page
To be torn in four and placed in a toilet
Friends will still be destroyed
Revenge still will be the enemies’
Let’s not wait

How many sunrises can a human bear
If his heart floods each morning
If eternally the sun rises red
And never fades?

How many sunrises can a human bear
If his heart through blood strings
Raises its wings, each evening falls
With burning swallows?

How many sunrises can a human bear
If his heart each morning trembles under a knife
And a thousand red dawns drag along with life
Like a long interminable red chain.

If thousands of mornings arrive without regret
And each must be lived differently?

This story is short.
They broke the hands
Of the pianist.

Broke them
In the name of World Revolution
And for the sake of a Bright Future.

They say,
If gods are to be fed
There must be a sacrifice.

And the pianist’s
Broken hands
The only proof of loyalty
If a human can ever pledge loyalty
To a voracious god.

Even though I’m not
Either Chinese
Our the pianist
Liu Shikun,
I know a thing our two
About idols
And idoltry.

There is nothing sensual about the short twilight moment
the teeth-locking of the waning light and mischievous life rhythms.
The sun is a grandiose sponge for the re-pumping of our blood,
squeezed into the aqualungs of our skin, we gaze at the December wind.
It’s a carefree thousand-handed cremator.
Its hands are a pharaoh’s desiccated bone marrow. Look, how it scatters the ashen snow on our heads.
Look, it come into our home, look, it gazes at us.
Look, it sits down beside us at the table.

Soundless conversations, the dark that penetrates our lips to stay,
a boy’s face smeared with marmalade, words without sense,
the sweltering armpits of visitors, restless candlelight and fir needles
chosen by the cremator. Against our will we become a family.
Fixed by mirrors pictures fidget, therein we swell in raw colors
like recently gutted fish. Question marks, leaning over the table –
smiling, mobile hair, jangling ice motes in our cartilage.
Trimm, trim, trim – an alarm clock turns itself on
so the cremator does not sleep in and shall wake us tomorrow
morning as set. The dusk hurries to cook up a compote from all
it has on hand – with foreheads shiny with frown lines, couch
dust, perplexing fiddling in corners. In a space
that doesn’t tolerate anyone, our hologram thousand-armed wind
hugs us and presses ever so close to us. Unbearable
to exist during solstice, to exude sap along with it, to drip to the next class.
It shares our meal, hiccupping, saying thanks for our largesse.
In our midst there are no witnesses nor can there be any.
The future catches on fire.
Our blood circulation sweeps us deeper within ourselves.

Days two seconds longer in a hoarse throat.