Jonas Zdanys 

Translator

I have  a backbone –   when I’m in unfamiliar surroundings I’m a stoic
I have  a backbone –   when I’ve swallowed a snake
I have  a backbone –   when I lie on the road’s dividing line
I have  a backbone –   when I winter in the tree wearing my father’s coat
I have  a backbone –   when I lean on eternity’s boundary marker
                                         my face turned toward the sun’s udder
I have  a backbone –   when I walk barefoot in the hospital ward
I have  a backbone –   when the shaman shoots it at the squirrel     
I have  a backbone –   when I embrace the trolley station’s pole
                                         without a schedule
I have  a backbone –   when at midnight I sacrifice my sweat to
                                         Tlazolteotl
my       backbone –        a ladder to the anthill tower  
my       backbone –        a hair broken by a nail
my       backbone –       the lamancha of catastrophe uniting father and                                                    mother
my       backbone –        a boulder crushing roller
                                          pulled farther offshore by seals
my       backbone –        a poison gas capsule swallowed by the sea
                                          only a hanger for keys to the morgue of loneliness
my       backbone –        a pole of sulphur sulfide in the pit of the ocean
                                          around which in the lava’s light dance drunken                                                  mollusks
my       backbone –        in the grass of childhood watered by dungwash
                                         when with my brother clinging to lapels
                                         we shook down the lights in the August dusk
                                         we buried them
                                         we were successful I wasn’t seen
                                         that was the case

...we messed the sheets up with our backs, exchanged vertebrae –
    played with our bones...
 
I
 
slipping across the lake in a boat, to the other bank – – –
I caress your throat with the blade of my tongue, climb on your neck, shoulders, lick
your wrists, fingers, dive into the well of your bellybutton, your groin. suck into the whole
of summer like a lurking tick.
slipping across the lake in a boat – – –
I slurp away the chin’s juicy pear, in which bees party, pluck
the ripened plums of breasts. they are ready to rip from their fullness, and                       wiggle like lambs
flying from the hill.
slipping across the lake in a boat – – –
I caress temples with my cheek, pass across eyebrows and forehead,
                     with my lips pinch off
a ripened grape – of sweat – – –
 
II
 
when we slipped across the lake in a boat at night, not having a place to                            hide their shame
stars coughed into closed fists. we waved with flags of clothing, and rowing
with our feet we drowned nets of memory, tore away anchors that tied
us to the earth. an opposing wind shoved our moans back into our throats,                      screams and
squeals – – –
not having a place to hide their shame stars coughed into closed fists – – –
when we hoisted to the other bank, to the provincial town, Hades I think,                      the moon
laughed with a full throat – – –
and we soused the ferryman and left him lying in the rushes. for the                      money we owed him
we intended to buy opium and rakia. the closer we got to the bank
                     – the farther it receded.
we could see troughs surrounded by animals, Pan playing on a bone.
                     not having a place
to hide their shame stars coughed into closed fists and stared into the                              lakes – earth’s
open wounds, in which we wriggled, worms brimming with passion,                                  hungry to live
and die in desire. each for two. happy – until in the lake, among these                              infinitives
– – –

a bright night, warm and gentle as the insides of your thighs,
you will sleep through that morning, wake in the day, wait half
the sleepy night with me, outside the window snows will blow as
they blew, in gusts, outside the window cold hands of cold touch
the apple trees' white skin, the half-empty garden stretches across
the expansive noticeable expanse, dry the white scrubbed linen
sheets of your dead mother, heavy and slow, their flowered dresses,
rarely dreamed of, rustle
dearest, my dearest, you give me a gift of me, feeble and dirt free

My nostrils moistened
My breathing became heavy and quick
Two halves of a shell rustled under soft-furred lids
I closed my eyes snored my tongue fell out
Rough but slippery with thick saliva
I panted forced to my knees – bellowing glassy-eyed with fear

An ebonite censer
Eyes of fire, cardinal,
Crumbling death cups in the hand
Moss in the mouth

Who spun my hair
With scratching shots of pine cones?
Who cut a belt out of my heart
Who dressed the wound with nettles?

A girl from the fading photograph approaches
A shy confirmand in the procession

Don’t tremble so
Sweet deer
Don’t tremble so
Sweet deer

let everything return – fruits shrink back to blossoms
grass back to seeds
murdered sugarcane stands back up
on its stalks
let everything return – words turn into wind
and wind into silence
let everything return – tequila into blue agaves
names into lips, and lakes once again
to clouds

griffons need meat and the snake milk
hands need stones, blades – blades
the spider needs fall, and the fall – fruits
everything returns from where it came and is
where it was, fall needs water, water – water lilies

let everything return – stands back up and rests

strike my shoulder snake – I give you my shoulder
strike my hand snake – I give you my hand
strike my liver sister snake –
carry off my lungs and esophagus
my feet and my tongue
jump over my shoulder wild cat
jump over my mouth wild cat
jump over my hands wild cat –
let everything return – let Zorro return
let everything return – let him sit behind the table
let everything return – lick salt from his hand
let everything return – take illnesses away snake
let everything return – heal exhaustion spider
let everything return – cat take away weakness
let everything return – griffon throw up good health

a fading reddish sand colored fresco
on the wall of the renaissance church
Christ’s hands breaking bread are already blackening
his face is cracked –
each year the fissure deepens

above the heads
near the cupola
a stained-glass window of thin glass – time
broke several panes – they are now replaced
by plain glass
through the plain glass shines a plain winter
through the red – a red one:
the maple’s red branches still stretch to caress
the church’s tin head

I kneel
head tilted back look at the vapor
rising from my mouth –
I do not pray:
I am sixteen years old –
too much to still believe
too little to believe
again

my mother’s soprano
reverberating against the church’s arch
casts about
until the highest note freezes

to the red winter

Christ looks at me
from the ancient fresco
and sees through my thoughts even
my erotic dreams, filling the space between church and school

I kneel in the cold and half-empty nave
almost near the vault of heaven
a bird settled in my mother’s throat
sings

from the other side
of these walls
echoes the roar of motorcycles –
my friends the centaurs
search for death:

I see myself dead beneath a heavy, still moaning
beast – its stinking blood
pours onto my face
onto the snow
onto the red winter
gasoline

squinting Christ from the peeling fresco
wants to tell me something

I kneel with my head tilted back
I do not pray

I

my brother sits on an old stool
and bends symbols he alone understands
out of copper wire

wire spirals, ovals, squares
wire hearts
hung on nails hammered into the wall

I find the luster of the copper wire beautiful
shining slow-worm bodies
bog berries – I pick them and put them in my mouth

they dissolve
a copper snake
hypnotizes my shadow

my brother concentrating bends wire symbols

II

he sits wrapped in a plaid rug
and stares into the corner
(where the wall and ceiling intersect)

slowly the plaster comes off
falls onto the floor
the colors fade

neglected, dead spider webs
above the rot –
dampness penetrates ever deeper

my brother smokes
and his hands tremble
now he looks through the window

I see how wrinkles open on his forehead –
it is hopeless to resist
everything happens that happens

I listen to my brother’s speech
suddenly remember that I am older

the yellow stain on the wall looks like a map

in my other life as a horse
I worked like a horse, during a funeral
in the early middle ages in the Prussian
contests I was driven exhausted, still alive, into a hole
pushed on my knees face down, my front legs
bent, pressed up against my breastbone, crack
went the first and second vertebrae in my neck, eyes
turned to the setting sun, toward overseas fisheaters, rump
lifted high
in my other life as a horse
I sweated in a German mine in Bohemia
in rathole darkness, went blind
one night, standing under
the new moon, they led me to stable, then later slowly  
at night, as the moon fattened to full, my blinders
went wider and wider, they seasoned me
in my other life as a horse
having brought Mickevičius from Naugardukas to Wilno
I wandered the city’s streets
on wooden sandals
to die – everyone to that beloved land, to Vilnius
now I am an apparition in Belmont
it happens too that I’m frightened
by thieves and cars in Sereikiškės
on my neck dragging a policeman
the color of distant woods

in my other life as a bird I worked as a nightingale
in a town of hills and valleys near the Danube, framed
by forests, groves, in fields in Lithuania
I wakened the hayreapers
in my other life as a bird
all just barely dark night long from May to June
I went mad, all slavic night long
I went to race with evening’s
and later with morning’s birds, shutting
them all off, the rabid cuckoo
of morning still surprised the naked poet
Europennies in his pocket, the pocket in the other room
love remains, death and recruits
you will cuckoo yourself

in my other life as a poet
I noticed that all French girls, if we travel
lay down or fly – put me to sleep, just alongside
so we would not have to talk
with words or hands, or hot
finger pillows or edges
of lips, I dream in a closed space