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

***

In the city, quarantine
and grief. everyone
waits for the snow.

on the facades, and
in the streets –
an indelible hideousness.

witches have multiplied.
they publish polished
books
about themselves.

shamans in the gateways
shine amulets,
whose spells
have gone stale.

Belarus, Poland –
burning fences
everywhere.

overturned trucks
with contraband
of winter.

meat is sold
by the road,
virtually free.

animals have emigrated,
along with the connoisseurs
of sacred script,
and any woman
who could walk.

only men
with fishing poles
and flags,
rocks
in their bosoms –

everyone
in one square,
so that it would be easier
to take them up
into heaven
and lock them up
until they sober.

in the window
of the facing house,
in the kitchen,
a light burns.

naked death
rummages through
the refrigerator.

it’s her
yellow jackboots
that shine
when she walks
the streets.

she notices me
and nods.

see you soon.
            Translation of “Mieste kvarantinas...”

Station – Dzūkų st. 

The station sounds every night. Sad beastly trains rumble by. A checkpoint on the pedestrian bridge: those in possession demand more from the meek. The moon is a gypsy knife gleaming through smog. A dive along the road: blue Hopper ghosts. Beer, drunken brotherhood, a cross dog across the road. All of us here are over the edge. Farther on, there are the fumigated hills, in which we have no faith. Children – we fear. Trees turn to snakes below ground. At dawn – only at dawn – the station seems like snug stables. When you returned, you saw how the locals soap the sides of trains. You hear shouts, sometimes sun and wind from over there: where we will ride. 

                                            Translation of “Stotis – Dzūkų g.” 

Instructions for building an ant-hill 

                                                                    –for Edgaras 

To begin with, you have to spit on the ground for a long time, earnestly, with clean, white spume. Next, bite and chew, bite and chew. Then toss together what you like. A refuge of crumbs, a cabin from clay, a shelter of sticks and straw. Spit-smear it like a cake. Scratch out some openings, a flue. Invite friends and relatives. Raise a ruckus for three days, four nights. Go out to the porch early in the morning, in bare feet, and look: some stare at fog, some at the clouds, some at the highway – then drive everybody out. Bring home a little mother, breed a whole brood, multiply until the get doesn’t fit. Then baptize them all, raise them, marry them, drive them out of the house. Later, paste up the openings, leaving only the flue and a key around your neck, some logs, the domestic beast. When the animal croaks, lock the doors, take a bottle, go out to the porch and sway on the swing for a long time. Until it freezes. Translation of “Skruzdėlyno statybos instrukcija”

                                                Translation of “Skruzdėlyno statybos instrukcija”