LITUANUS LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES   Volume 36, No.4 - Winter 1990 Editor of this issue: Violeta Kelertas ISSN 0024-5089 Copyright © 1990 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc.

POEMS BY JUDITA VAIČIŪNAITĖ

Translated by LAIMA SRUOGINYTĖ

Narrow Street

Where the yard like a sea shell guards
the tiny graceful church,
where green shutters and windows open
onto the sooty snow,
on the pavement's cross section,
onto clay lives,
and the depth under peat,
where the tree's holiness rotted,
where the sun's magical circle
still guards the fireplace flame,
and the green bronze sand,
the bear's thousand year old mask,
the boar's teeth amulet,
the ghostly enhancing dance above it—
in medieval clay,
where the alley deepens
towards the Neris' missing ford.

The Cafe with Pigeons

By the railroad tracks and the market,
by the trolleybus stop under snow
I still found the cafe with pigeons—
old women and gypsies gather there,
there I heard the pigeons' coo
and the morning rustle of their frosted wings,
there I picked up
a snow feather
from the dirty stone floor
and took my bag,
and, with a torn heart
glanced through the window—
clouds swam into the distance,
through the crossroad's fading stars,
February clouds . . .

Post Scriptum

In the central post office
fresh from the springtime sun,
still with their primeval feathers
ferns sway
in shaded flowerpots—
old as the world
they sprouted in the dark,
they spread for the present,
they spread for hope,
and I crumpled up my letter—
I too belong
to that primeval world,
a shaft of sunlight still so green
earthy and eternal
in the post office,
fresh from the springtime sun.

My Grandparents' Portraits at Piliakalnis

In winter's oblivion, in the snowbound cabin's
unheated sitting room
only my grandparents' portraits
have returned to the empty farmstead—
I stumble upon them, by the frozen well at night
as if in a dream
where centuries old midwinter linden trees
reach toward heaven on tiptoe,
and in the dark on a bleached
frost-like wall
so lonely, painted after their deaths,
mourning in midwinter
my country grandparents' portraits,
every day they become more familiar, every day
I come to resemble them more,
myself evidence of their existence.

That White House

That white house—a reflection,
where the two of us will live,
where a lonely boy will play
with wet ashberries;
where we will never need to be separated,
where childhood's beams
will splash from the stones,
and where you can't avoid me.

Like a dragonfly's wing from the water
shiny and green
The glass of your opened window quivers in the sun
— I love
you to your depths,
not erased by hundreds of miles
through larch branches
my green gaze hungers for you . . .