Six Poems
By Tomas S. Butkus.
E. C. §
they are voices frozen in the cave of an unknown silhouette with millions of bugs above the larva of the train
Volcano Dweller ¥
you cannot choose father speech
or yourself
who are you?
you are moved by a woman’s heart
without it you feel like death
you have never lived under the sun
right before sunset
having her strike
you cannot give away
no prometheus
you are only the riot
it brings you at night
from the city’s magma
from the arms of the beloved
to your home
who are you?
and where is your home?
Wedge ¥
so i’ll finish here.
love and death start to recede,
with no location, character, plot.
only utility poles with cables,
only the ice posts overhead
and crystal splinters on the rails
fill the private pressured knowledge.
behind you there is the same heart of the horizon,
which belongs to two people at once,
almost in the same coordinate,
almost the same entourage.
but how alien are these words.
i have grown them, being deaf,
i don’t know their meanings.
when i say them i hear them buzzing.
it’s a model of a dead train –
its painted-over hammer and sickle, the logic
is looming in the museum’s window.
it’s the ice post snapped from the oncoming echo
in the reddish horizon, it’s a wedge
The Clamber €
the eyes restored by muteness
to the wind driven by mist
in an occured cold
on this side of the pole town
i saw this in the ice
above the frozen pond
on its snow covered surface
there are footmarks skittled –
the language of all the quick of the world –
and dismal shadow of metallic
clamber near bulrush
a four black circles in that place
where the other kind of seeing is starting
and words sunken already
into a sludgy break of the pond
wading in four legs into the time of suppression
(now it is clear – it‘s the loss of the memory) –
red rectangulars of things cleaned out in the snow
the tongue freezed on the metal of syllables
Sequoia Snowdrifts £
and then the night opens its eyes
and the falling snow darkens everything
which sheds light – cranes on towers
burial fields of apartment blocks
faces in the fire of lingering
hearths and is falling and falling
like clouds from the charred forest
burned out cut down sent down
the drain, it filters into soil
to the weary minds to football
fields
falling and falling, disappeared
goals, names, the abyss
white snow wall–
white snow communion–
the white snow seed — –
–
everyone’s quiet
dumbfounded
only a coyote
poet
only one
who somehow survived
in a great forest
blind and grey
no one knows how high
in the snows of sequoias
falling and falling
no one knows when it will finish
when the night opens its eyes
when it opens its eyes
when we
when
who
God-Thing £
things are hanging in the air and fading
linking the ground, where the city
is deleting any connection
overwriting the memories
it’s restoring
nobody’s forms
caught by the rain and unknown wind
it does nothing, it only expands
growing inside for us underground
things are hanging in the air
and breeding
as if they never were here before
or as if they’d grown out of some sporadic microdream
sneezed out by indigenous races
spit out to the grass
the roots growing from fruit
things are hanging in the air
and we are very close to weightlessness
we are talking over distance, breathing from afar
into self, which exist
in entirely different geographic milieus
in the mass of burning phenomena
in the pit of the cold light
in the denouement
the self-destroyed god-thing
in the mass of burning phenomena
in the pit of the cold light
in the denouement
the self-destroyed god-thing
§ Translated by Kerry Shawn Keys and Edgaras Platelis
¥ Translated by Edgaras Platelis and Becka Mara Mckay
€ Translated by Gerrie Fellows
£ Translated by Edgaras Platelis, Jake MB Levine
Photo copyright - Eurika Stogeviciene
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tomas S. Butkus (official name Tomas Butkus, nickname Slombas, born 1975 in Klaipeda, western Lithuania) is an artist of concepts (he acts as a poet, essayist, architect, and publisher as well). He graduated from Vilnius’ Gediminas Technical University with a degree in architecture (MasterS degree in 1999, Doctoral degree in 2009). Since 1992 he has been working in various interdisciplinary fields through the Vario burnos (“Copper Mouths”) workshop of concepts, which he established. He received the Druskininkai Poetry Fall prize of the best debut in 2001 for his poem-novel Mylintis organizmas (The Loving Organism, 2000). In 2004 he was awarded the prize of The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore for the most creative book of 2003, Generuotos kalbos mutacija (Mutation of Generated Language, 2003). He participated in various international programmes and contests including: Young Writers Meeting in Visby (Gotland, Sweden in 2001), International Writing Program (Iowa City, USA in 2002), Baltic Ring sessions (Finland in 2002-2003), International Young Publisher of the Year award competition (London, UK in 2004) and others. Tomas S. Butkus is also a member of the group of sound and poetry Betoniniai Triušiai (“Concrete Bunnies”). His latest publication is a monograph on postindustrial city phenomenon, called City as Event. Urban Study on Cultural Functions.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Sunday, April 17th, 2011.
