By Eugenijus Ališanka.
the world according to celan and einstein
gray photography of ashes
from which a woman smiles vilnius century’s end
a man as if alone plenty of room in corners
that turn yellow from the sun of vesuvius
of fingers they return to the same place
because it is an emptiness according to celan
according to einstein it inflates and splits
from the lives of the saints
I’ve tuned my vocal chords
now even a cough is in a major key
now everything I think about
harmonizes with life
logical inferences feces
decalogues troikas of stalin quadrats of rock ‘n’ roll
poets prostitutes
the last woman saint in europe died
without writing a book
the first one died
without knowing a man
so that sinners like me
can cough politely covering mouth with palm
or with a knife along the whole gamut
along the whole life
everything I think about harmonizes with the poem
marlborough hotel
as forecast the wind is rising
litter resurrects its promised land
across a span from the center of the empire
beyond the sea the balts carouse
spices on a woman’s body
she is no one’s so everyone’s eyes indulge
many aim out one span
from the center they think about day and night
even words have lost accuracy
judges are more concerned about poetry
poets about the anatomy of death
even the messenger forgets to sober up
in the capital for shame I forgot
which god had to accompany me
a passerby asks where are you from
and suddenly the wind rises
a scrap of newspaper leaps from the pavement
hits my face satori or the chain of devolution
what’s the difference soho chinatown
everywhere I am one span away
from a woman’s shoulder from
a black taxi speeding by on the right
a left-hander knows this all his life
and the wind changes direction
at every crossroad but always blows in my face
I barely open my mouth to ask the way
my tongue is buried in sand in dead
dunes in oases of mirages after forty
years having left the fringes of the empire
here before the mirror
in the hotel I cannot afford to finish
what I have started
golden season
wearing army boots you clumped through the vineyards of god
somewhere on the adriatic in medana or priština maybe piran
since school days geography has been your blind spot
your worn overcoat faded by weather shows its original color
where your insignias were roman fatigue
or just the tedium at the fringes of the empire
patches stained with dirt and blood in the nights there was time enough
to think about possibilities of life about other lives here
about a woman about many women
imprisoned in attics of your dreams while the south wind
every morning blows in wreckage of jason’s ships
sweat of impassioned men the mirage of the most beautiful woman
every drowned man would tell the truth about how many women he’d had
but the living don’t dare make a mistake
they make mistakes and let themselves be chained to oars
to the mast women singing in the vineyards
which century from
history is your blind spot
only the erection you hide behind a shield
betrays your nomadic soul your merciless
hunger for blood even now at the end of the century
against a background of faded architecture
where clotheslines barely hold flapping laundry
you are not indifferent to death maybe just a cheap wine
just a ticket from a travel agency in the pocket of your jeans
fixing your eyes on the thighs of the girl selling grapes
you smell the delicious scents of helen
on the question of ecology
my ecological balance has been disturbed
the climate is warming days grow tepid
and nights cool but it’s enough
the glaciers on the peaks of hegel kant lenin are melting
you can’t see it with the naked eye when you set out for mountains
snow-covered peaks rocks look like rocks
everything in its place riots ergo rots
at the lower reaches landmarks appear
more and more often the river floods chokes the surges of memory
drowns fields leaving neither path nor meadow
I wade to my knees cherry branches from gojiškis
a soda fountain apples from the dalvevka’s orchard
medicinals from the altaj the first condom
empty beer bottles float by
without any joy of cognition
they scud by no regret
more often I feel the greenhouse effect
don’t want to go out
endangered clades are disappearing
species hidden within daily life are dying
words tremblings kisses letters
there where virgin forests had stood
full of meanings and mysteries
deserts of shifting sands of imagination appear
a bony conformation opens slowly
and a low scrub of passions
grows over my dreams my balance has been disturbed
one leg is kicking the air
the other feeling for the ground
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eugenijus AliÅ¡anka was born in 1960 in exile in the Siberian town of Barnaul. His family was granted permission to return to Lithuania in 1962. Alisanka graduated from Vilnius University in 1983 with a degree in Mathematics. AliÅ¡anka established his literary career with the publication of his first collection of poetry, Equinox, which won the Zigmas GÄ—lÄ— award for the best debut of 1992. His second book, City of Ash (1995), was published in English translation in 2000 by Northwestern University Press. The present volume translates his fourth collection, originally published in 2002. His essay collections are An Imagining Man (1998) and Return of Dionysus (2001). He has also translated from Polish and English into Lithuanian, including work by Wislawa Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert, Dannie Abse, Carolyn Forch é, and many others. His poetry has been translated into English, Russian, Swedish, Bulgarian, French, Finnish, Hebrew, German, and other languages.
