LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES	ISSN 0024-5089 Copyright © 2014 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc. www.lituanus.org
Volume 60, No.1 - Springr 2014 Editor of this issue: Rimas Uzgiris

Ramunė Brundzaitė

by the Bernardines

grasses shoot through hands,
airplanes into shoulder blades,
a host of hosts

we sit, the two of us
encircled

by gravestones like the crossed arms
of austere monks
under a cowl of sky –
the Bernardines

duchess, is it far to Petushki?
beyond the river, down Polotsk Street
by Saint Anne’s lurking Gothic skeletons
and all those saints

only that!
or a few burning shots

somewhere, a bonfire,
in brackets –
our histories
slink by
like a snail on a leaf
leaving a trail of ooze
a river

the snail a paintbrush
the snail a pen
slowly, slowly –
word by word, stroke by stroke,
the windfall fruit, the melting wax of chestnut trees –
the chronicles of Vilnius, advances, retreats,
lay out our history’s trail of ooze

Translation of “ties bernardinais”

wisteria

the first task was to name,
to find out what we call
those blooms of
violet color

then sit in a little cafe
shaded from the Mediterranean sun
by an arbor enlaced with them

put a cup on the page
my pen
spill coffee
lean a used bike
fifty euro
on the fence

in my favorite place
piazza San Giacomo
paved by the Romans
to touch my tongue
to the already melting
gelato

sundays climbing the castle hill
to sharpen my view of the mountains,
seeing the streets enshrouded below with fog,
imagining my city there
hundreds of miles away

hundreds of weeks later
sitting in a frozen East European
auditorium
reading D’Annunzio
I remember this bloom

Translation of “glicinijos”

lepidoptera graves

moths, monarchs
friends

our day is only a little longer
than yours

we end in worms
where you began

unfurling
like flowers from sorrow

in mini bouquets,
as scythe-winged eggars,
as down-bellied spinners,
as bumblebee flames

fluttering in my stomach
with delicious words, florid forms,
until you painfully wilt

my palms
are monarchs
led home
by pages
from the kingdom of Hades

to her –
whispered
in every tongue
with covered lips,
bitten tongues

Proserpinus proserpina
the sleepwalking sphinx,
the hawkmoth –
a wingéd woman
with lion’s nails