LITUANUS LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES   Volume 39, No.4 - Winter 1993 Editor of this issue: Violeta Kelertas, University of Illinois. at Chicago ISSN 0024-5089 Copyright © 1993 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc.

A SELECTION FROM THE POETRY OF TYMOTEUSZ KARPOWICZ

MUSICAL EVENING STROLL

when shoulders will be orchestrated
by time to sing along with sleeves
to music stand to moderato
to other shoulders' rigid order
when avidly our voice will pass
barefoot from heart to waxing forth larynx
nor yet one dove beneath the vault
of fire will be sent on song
but sinks its neck into our throat
to sip the fireborn saliva
unswallowed after a communion
of the clandestine conductor
then still there will be time to find on
the very bottom of a river
which doesn't exist a non-existing
flute which the lips of a child
have hidden in a singing boat
to start to play an absent sound
of the quondam resurrection
from silence on those lips abandoned
in order to follow too a fleeing song

translated by Frank Kujawinski

LUPINE CANTATA

a house buried in snow where mother
with a Christmas hand spreads on a tablecloth
the thin wing of an angel

the wolf upon the snow with the crooked
hunger of frosted jaws strokes
the movement of the mother's hands with his tongue

for the first time the almighty is all-powerful in his defenselessness
I bestow on him a hymnal he puts
his whole self into it and sings

despite all this mother shades with her scarious eyelid
the faithful eyes of the domestic animals
and on this eve she doesn't trust the carol

translated by Frank Kujawinski

FISH

A dark fish swam under
cutting me into halves —
on both sides of the horrid fin
I stand and look at myself

Was it I who collected pink pebbles
mended flowers' eyes so they could see more color
kissed a bumble-bee on mistrustful pupil
led from seed to seed
a blind field mouse?

Was it I like a burnt-out wall
artillery's target fire's favorite
a nice balance for forty ton tanks?

Which of us two was needed more by the open gate
through which a girl ran in with a mauve dog?

Are you horrible fish the old tiny goldfish
which fell out of my hand into the depths of the world?

translated by Ewa Zak

VOYAGE OF A BRANCH

I sail over the earth I sail over the water I sail over the air
I am a branch of beech the shoulder of a tree the hope of birds
Call after me: green wild leafy madwoman
kiss me as I sail on for never again will I return

This is my last voyage no one at all will believe it
Tell it to the foresters—they'll just spit and go on
But you poet look closely I am really sailing the earth
I really do love the hoops cast into the wind by the swallows

Where necks of well-springs and eyes of coming verdure are buried
where wind before it envisions itself—knows already the shape of its breath
where longing takes the shape of a leaf where speaking takes the shape of a rose—
dead thirsty for a goal I doggedly sail ahead of myself
on the firm shoulders of one carrying in his hand an ax

translated by Frank Kujawinski

artistic copy

CIRCLE OF THE DANCE OF LOVE

and out of love she shed a scarf from her hair
then shed the hair beyond the scarf
then what could be recalled of hair
then what could not now be recalled
she approached him from all sides of the neck
then the neck approached the sides
then the sides approached the neck
then the sides were without sides
then the necks were without necks
she was happy flayed herself of body
then body flayed of body
then what could not remember body
then what remembered nothing
she was always herself for him
while not for him she was herself
while not herself she wasn't for him
while not for she wasn't her

translated by Frank Kujawinski

A TOMBSTONE SHOWING TWO ANGELS

kidnapped to paradise
by masterless angels
against her slavery
she eternally looks
back to sins whose
main tree reaches birds
in her suspended chant
of desolate memory

she feels forlorn
on loan to her knees
among her entreating virtues
outside her knees and at peak
of holy humiliation
she explains her body
to the angel on the right
and its absence
to the one on the left
but they can see nothing
between them and uphold it
as the alienation
of the herewith present

translated by EWA ZAK

A MOMENT IN THE SIDE AISLE

(with a stained glass window)
the quiet after speech welling
up the mineral icon of the air
sheds from the split lip
a pensive drop of blood

everlasting is the sense of silence
of the stone prophet
his concrete tongue
now undermines all
organs that ascend to heaven
on the viviparous wall
of collective sin
there bulges a vein of concentration

it is a votive
quotation from the fish
which haunted by the satan of color
abandons its species
and lacking angels
with a chalice of joy
puts forth its gills
under the unrelenting stanching
by God

amen

translated by Ewa Zak

MORNING DIALOGUE

sheer dawn's beauty
where do you cradle the neck
of a wood-free sunny bough
so that the high nest of death
is afraid and the world's
first diva stops singing
she lays her white lips beyond
the birds' wafted notes she follows
in shimmer the mounting peacocks
of breathing — free-born
every barrier is in you
except your own squirting
from the radiant side
with a rib on fire

it is your sigh that sends me
on the swords of rays
plunged to the hilt into the sun
it is your neck that raises
my drooping head
from nature's dissecting hand
and from our blindness now
it is you who open a soaring blaze

but living twofold you at once
demand intravenous ecstasy
and aim two mirrors at the mirror
antecedent to riddles to where
would I get by combing your hair
with the secant ray of my gaze
to the moulted truth of a number
earmarked in the stables of computers
or to the hairy barger's hand

all step forth from me when flames
unravel their feet for they don't know
that only when I take over
all roles of love
thus breaking off my fiery arms
without reproach like say
a huge limb of smoke
from moses' burning bush
so tomorrow anew I will rise up on your arm

translated by EWA ZAK

FROM: A LOOSENING OF SPACES

REVERSED LIGHT

when my punt will reach the sun
I shall wait a while will not get off the shore
I shall look from here at all sets
of light at its names and synonyms
like unending scud uphill sweat
instant spurs in the eye a frantic
horseless rider lashing a branch
of precocious lilac stuck in another's horse the cheek
ploughed with pity the hauberk of order
in my restive arm the icy
seal of death on the snows of glory
better left untold like
a gnawed tunnel of a brotherly throat
where rats built nests out of manifestos
my own hand grubbing in another's brain
in search of the formula for open life
in the hooded snare of death the scaffold on the altar
God in battle dress with the defence a long
chopped off hand of memory on the sign
all that was indeed my reversed light
lit up when dying down and died down lighting up
but the nation's cluster on the heart kept skimming up the
peak of blood behind which I could never see the sun

translated by EWA ZAK

INCOMPREHENSIBLE CRY

in the wolf of my childhood in the light of whose
glowing eyes I see translucent
all forests of the world

the soldier licking blood from a bayonet
so terrifyingly bright beneath a birch
hungrily eyeing the wolf

are the two dreadful wicks
of my first lamp which
crouched over the snows of vilno
begot frozen hunks of light

and above these there burst on both sides
of the glare the incomprehensible cry
from a mountain
of frozen lungs—run away
or the light will be thrown
on you

sine 

when you meet a wolf remember this that it's not an animal which stands before you but opportunity

ROMULUS II

cosine

myself I would rather eat a wolf than plunge my hand in fire to save my fur

CAIUS MUCIUS SCAEVOLA II

tangent

sanctuary lamps have the shortest life

ST. LUCY II

cotangent

if you terrify my light—I'll close all my pictures

GEORGES DE LA TOUR III

secant

there are no incomprehensible phenomena—there are only their incomprehensible descriptions

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN II

cosecant

to get a pound of frozen lungs we went sometimes as far as Siberia

EMILIA PLATER II

A LESSON WITH THE MAGIC RABBIT

among sorcerers it isn't necessary to conjure up the seven wonders of the world
what enchants them is simple slicing of bread pouring of water to jug
seeing thread pass instead of camel through eye of needle takes their breath away
they will be dumbfounded by you buttoning up your coat instead of lungs

there where a miracle is easier than an ordinary bowl of pickle soup
release your hat-trick rabbit on a bit of grass that's been trampled
by the grand wizard from the east with his magic boots of steel
and observe how the rabbit chews so you can chew the same

of all incantations you have collected in you
in the reproduction of a child's world's wonders
for the morning diapering of the fatherland in your flesh
guard this one well as you enter your hunger
"sesame my sesame close forever"

sine

the first duty of every khan exercising authority over a defeated country is to sterilize all local scheherazades

GENGHIS KHAN II

cosine

a good magician can hold all existing objects in a hat but a perfect one can leave them untouched just where they are

SARASTRO II

tangent

I am ready to provision every altitude but not the ladder to it

PROSPERO II

cotangent

I'm making a sap under sesame so I can break in

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN II

secant

we don't accept magic incantations in a pawnshop because they're always in a language unknown to miracles

PAWNSHOP OWNER II

cosecant

the soviet union is the only country producing picklocks for sesames

LINUS YALE II

translated by Frank Kujawinski

IN THIS INSTANT

only in this instant are you being born
sheathing your pulse with a delicate skin

only in this instant are you milking mother's
breast joining yourself to the milky way

only in this instant are you going to your
first communion when God holds you all too
firmly in his arms lest you turn aside

only in this instant are you graduating into
the refusal of learning

only in this instant are you sowing yourself
for the first time in a girl well is there any other way

only in this instant are you walking behind
her coffin filled with a body so dear to you

only in this instant do you see your hands now
crossed on your breast by her irreplaceable even after death

there was never yesterday there will never be tomorrow

there is only today this moment in which you
are writing or reading these words

only in this moment can you determine their
meaning take them by hand and lead them

either to fields where blue cornflowers are
visibly hidden among the rye

or to a fire to burn together with you in this instant forever

where ashes can be only of yesterday or of tomorrow

translated by FRANK KUJAWINSKI