Song (Dziesma)
In the cold my voice grew horase
and one day my song
was frozen solid.
I drank hot milk and honey
and recited a single prayer:
for the song to return — if only like
the moos of cows or bees buzzing.
Then it happened: in the night, when all
who tended me were gone,
from the waterfront slaughterhouses
cattle broke onto the streets.
Thirsty, they mooed the city full. Galloping,
with their hot breaths and bodies
they melted the snow from windows and trees,
from skyscrapers and squares.
I pushed open the window — a scream
thawed my voice. From it, as from a river,
cows were drinking at noon. Soaking
their warm udders in my song –
their warm udders in my song.
(trans. by Laris Saliņš)
At a performace (Kādā izrādē)
A temple?
Holy Communion?
The Eve of the Flood?
But over the loudspeaker come stock reports, weather forecasts
(“mostly sunny”…), lectures on horticulture,
and a red-haired woman in a bathrobe,
dangles her legs over the balcony rail,
and plays the cello –
or is it her legs that she plays?
And in the corner two young people play ping-pong.
In the meantime
God has stepped out by the altar
and is building
the Flood –
blue waves, green waves –
higher,
higher,
higher,
higher…
The youngsters stop their ping-pong match —
and switch to
tiddlywinks.
On my right a Pakistani or Indian woman with beautiful skin
asks for the time
or a safety pin
I show her the in-
side of my fin,
but the cellist starts on an Irish spin.
God glances over his shoulder,
disgusted,
dismantles the waves
and takes them back to the flood warehouse.
Suddenly someone rises and shouts:
“Stop these antics –
liberate the captive nations!”
What? Was it me who shouted? Sweating
I collapse in my seat. “Oh, I see –
you, too, have a part in this mystery”
marvels the Pakistani woman
with the beautiful skin.
And over the loudspeaker – stock reports, weather forecasts. But then
at last
demonstrations begin. People come
with posters. No, with totem poles down the aisles
come the vanquished Indian tribes,
the ancient Incas along their rope bridges,
and the ancient Jatvingians, ancient Galindians, ancient Old
Prussians and
dinosaurs, labidosaurs,
alosaurs, trachodons,
diplodoci, triceratops,
Tyrannosaurus rex —
they come in procession
with the Jatvingians, with the Galindians, with the Old Prussians
(It’s kind of fun to be extinct,”
a ghastly diplodocus whispers in my ear)
and they disappear where God disappeared.
And over the loudspeaker – stock reports, weather forecasts, lectures on horticulture.
From the cello, from the balcony rail
cries of fishes, laughter of earthworms, twittering of snakes.
And the Pakistani woman walks around and distributes
forgiveness of sins? mercy? the flesh of God?
I sense
through my leg, through my shinbone, someone is ringing me
(as if by telephone) – and then at my ear I hear
a dreaming skull –
waters mixed with sounds,
fire mixed with rocks,
hills with the sun, with the moon, with the stars,
plants with the air –
A dreaming skull.
(trans. by the author)
A Fauvist Landscape with Women (Pie fovistiem Parīzē)
Women,
still wet,
made of clay —
with God’s fingerprints, red and green, all over them.
Or are they God’s tongueprints?
Did He just finish
licking them out of clay
with His tongue?
(trans. by the author)
To Mooncities in the Ocean and Noah’s Wife (for Jānis Strods)
(Mēnesspilsētām okeānā un Noasa sievai)
Night. We’re by the ocean. And there
on the waves like on rolling vineyard slopes
moooncities are born.
They rush toward us, toward the shore and disappear
into the darkness, the sand, ourselves.
Ah, Noah’s wife,
when the flood came, you didn’t desire to be saved
with your hundred year old husband, but rather to stay in those cities
that dazzling disappear — drunk on hundred year old wine
and the Lord’s anger.
Did you,
Eve’s knowing daughter, take their rocking with you
into Noah’s Ark — maybe in your lap? — and send it
into the clenased world? With this rocking,
already rose the smoke of Noah’s first sacrifice?
And was it for just this reason it seemed so sweet
and familiar to the Lord – as if from your lap?
From your lap,
with the rocking of flood and ebb,
wine was born again — and on it, as if on the flood:
rolling cities, shattering fate, day and night.
Ah, Noah’s wife,
as it was in the beginning,
is and will be: with bone frames and flesh walls
we live in mooncities built on waves.
(trans. by Laris Salins)
The Architecture of Riga (Rīgas arhitektūra)
I.
One Riga
a friendly city, of ancient pavements and walls, crumbling stone
steps, towers and steeples,
the other — a city of fear,
fear in the steeples, in the walls, in the crumbling stone steps, in the cobblestone streets,
coursing through eyes and fingertips —
fear.
II.
We’re walking –
coming toward us the Laima clock and the linden trees, swans on the canal and
the Opera house, the Statue of Freedom – as on a postcard. But then
we cross Lenin Boulevard — and the asphalt crackles and caves in, we collapse,
collapse into the underground.
These are shafts,
they’re coal mines — in the center of Riga we’re suddenly
at a vast distance from Riga. We’re walking
through mines in the Siberian Arctic – stooping, huddling, whispering.
Somewhere, at a vast distance are
the linden trees, the Statue of Freedom – as in an old
postcard.
As in an old,
long faded postcard, somewhere in the distance,
at a vast distance, above our heads —
Rīga?
(trans. by Ilze Mueller Kļaviņa)
Abyss (Bezdibenī)
Deeper and deeper
we vanished into the gorge, vanished
into the abyss
of autumn leaf,
scent and fruit.
You let go my hand
and trotted ahead
downward amidst the fruit,
the gold,
the red.
Then you reclined in leaves,
hands around your knees,
arms around your black skirt.
Were you breathing fruit?
Were you waiting for me?
I caught up, filled up
your lap with fruit —
blushing and golden
you surrendered —
the immaculate conception.
Deeper and deeper
we vanished into the gorge, vanished
into the abyss
of autumn leaf,
scent and fruit.
(trans. by Laris Saliņš)
Vision (Parādība)
My mother carries me in my cradle on her head.
She walks like an Indian woman, without holding her load.
I trust this balance.
This balance between her and me.
Balance between her and the earth.
Balance between us and the earth and the stars.
My mother carries me in my cradle on her head.
My mother carries me in my coffin on her head.
(trans. by Bitīte Vinklere)
Homecoming (Vasarsvētki)
Earth under his fingernails — from it
meadow grass grew,
and from his toenails good-sized shrubs:
that’s how he came back to the city after a long sleep.
Flirtatious girls
clung to his blossoming elbows,
others decorated the streets with birches, with saplings,
which grew from his armpits.
But he — he lay down
next to himself
and drank from his own grassy palms,
as though at a bar – and then again, as though from an old well,
and partook of the smell of live pike as an appetizer.
“Make him say something,
make him say someting,
make him sing or
say something!” we shouted.
But, turning to our ears, we heard only
blossoms budding on his chest
and then a bee — or eternity? —
humming in the blossoms, or in his hair.
Interesting, but we wanted more —
a local jazz musician, a trombonist
bent down and tore from the sleeper’s thigh
a piece of birch or alder bark,
rolled it into a horn and
blew:
windows trembled in the bodies of skyscrapers,
wombs and breasts in the bodies of women —
as though the horn were not alder bark
but emotion, forgotten emotion.
“Enough!” a flushed, trembling blonde pleaded, “Enough!
An unsingable song protects us all
and gives us the strength to live.”
And falling to her knees, she conceived
and gave birth to a boy.
This fusion with the earth continued
three days and three nights. Like nude women,
brilliant yellow-red birch trees walked through the streets —
he was home.
(trans. by Ināra Cedriņš)
I woke to a horse’s neighing (Es pamodos no zirga zviedzieniem)
I woke to a horse’s neighing.
Through my hotel room window, left open that night,
leaned a horse’s head.
So Riga still had dray horses?
Amazed, I propped myself up on an elbow.
What to serve him — black bread? a pickle?
But then it hit me — he just might be
a secret agent in disguise!
He neighed again, more intelligibly:
“Calm down,
I’m not from the CIA or KGB. Don’t you know me? — Rick.
We parted thirty-three years ago — when they shipped me
to Volkhov.”
Rick! Of course!
Only with a deeper voice, and the looks
of a horse.
“It’s easier this way,” he neighed, muzzle on the sill.
After the war, dispatched to the north for a “rest.”
Upon returning at last, no father, mother, sister, no sweetheart anymore.
So, then — he had become a drayman.
A drayman?
I peered at him closely — no, a horse like any other horse!
“Well,” he lightly neighed, “it’s how you look at things.
Besides, there are advantages — for instance, their mics
can’t pick up horseplay . . .”
And he meaningfully glanced at my ceiling.
So, we horsed around.
About old times.
And so on.
And on and on.
At parting we drank a toast
of some good old “horse schnapps.”
“Till next time,” he neighed,
and, horseshoes clicking, trotted away
through Old Riga at dawn —
a horse like any other.
(trans. by Bitīte Vinklere)
Unearthed (Atraktais)
So this is what my
resurrection looks like —
no eye in the forehead,
no tongue in cheek?
These bones are all ears —
does the earth still resound?
Undertaker,
help me out:
play on these hips and
shins of mine
play the clouds
play the sunshine
a last call-and-response between
high heaven and
this voice that is now
but earth and darkness.
And, before the brightness
turns my bones to dust,
let’s have a reprise
of the eyes and the lips —
ever-rejoicing over the stone
eyes, lips and bone.
(trans. by Laila Salins)
Report of an arrest (Kādas apcietināšanas protokols)
When arrested he was wearing — no,
not the uniform of the boy scouts or the national guard –
he wore an off-white summer suit.
Sprawled in a field of rye, he was reading a book of poems.
Under his lapel they found —
not a concelaed pin with Latvia’s coat-of-arms,
but a dried-up daisy stalk.
The cartridge-shaped objects inside the lining
proved to be pebbles,
while from the left pocket of his trousers –
an adult’s pocket, mind you –
they removed a slingshot in working order.
There wasn’t one political pamphlet,
not one subversive document –
just some tobaco crumbs, and, covered in the crumbs,
a piece of black bread for fish bait
and a cork, still smelling of red currant wine,
in his breast pockets, programs
from song festivals, dances, and Memorial Days.
The security guards
rummaged through this material evidence and said,
“Public enemy number 1!”
And as the prisoner was led away along the river bank, profuse with flowers,
one of the guards, nervous and boyish-faced,
shuddered: “This air.
Even this air smells of subversion. It’s like
religion. Like the opium of the people. And all these
haze-filled horizons. And the brightness…”
He squinted at the river surface,
then jerked the barrel of his submachine gun upward
and let off seven bursts of bullets
into the white summer clouds shimmering in the water
(transl. by Ilze Mueller-Kļaviņa)
Spring in the city (Pilsētā pavasaris)
On a day that drizzled
mild and warm
I felt — on my chin
I felt — on my cheek
I felt with alarm
not a beard
but the first grass sprouting.
–Of all places! I muttered, and tried to hide
from passers-by.
Now, as I’m about to vanish down the A-line,
someone gently curls his arm through mine:
“What a fool you are!
Where else in the city can young grass sprout
when sprouts must sprout —
on stones?”
I look: on his cheek too
the gentle green of grass
peaks through
and buds of violets…
Spring had come to the city.
(trans. by Laila Salins)
Sing (Dziedi)
for Laila
Sing – sing so that
stars press up against the windowpanes
and the sun and the moon
and grandmothers from the stars
and grandfathers
Sing – sing so that
bird’s milk begins to flow from women’s breasts
and from men’s
also from men’s
Driving across the bridge, you sing – and the river sits up
in astonishment
as we speed away faster than sound,
your voice streaming behind us like red roses,
red winds
You sing – and our flesh turns transparent
till it vanishes entirely and we behold
in that voice of yours
as in a flowing mirror
our souls so long unseen
and dazed we rub our eyes that are no more
Sing – sing for those
who cannot sing
for those who are dead – their non-singing
is more like our singing than we know
if our singing is true – as true
as their silence
So sing – sing so that children are born –
and children to those children — and their children’s children. Sing,
so we are reborn — so that we see ourselves —
see ourselves
beyond death
(trans. by Bitīte Vinklers Bluķis)
Flying out (Izlidojot)
We are among the clouds – we are
in the day before the creation of the world.
There is no earth yet.
Only space.
But how can that be?
Already you’re here –
Eve,
and at your naked shoulder am
I, Adam.
Someone warns you: “Don’t
believe everything he tells you!”
You smile back: “We live
not on faith, but on
love.”
(trans. by Andrejs Saliņš)
A Museum Piece (Muzejā)
In the ancient sunstone
I felt the heat of an ancient sun.
And I came to life.
I started to dance.
I was the god of this altar.
When I had finished — still out of breath, still godlike —
I put my arm around my beloved,
ready to move on.
But at that moment the museum guard
stopped us. “You don’t mean to…” he asked her, pointing at me,
“you don’t mean to take this exhibit with you?”
And nothing could convince him,
neither documents nor her despair.
He called another guard, and then the two of them
got me (I still can’t figure out how)
inside the sunstone.
I’ve been here now – god knows how long.
Occasionally my beloved comes to visit me, and when the
guards aren’t looking
she touches the stone and whispers,
“My love . . .”
And that’s how we live now.
(trans. by the author)
The Leap (Lēciens)
And, having spent half a lifetime and yet another half a night with poetry,
at this moment at the party
I brought her a drink with a slice of lemon
and she got up and stuck out her
tongue.
“No,” she said:
“I want to go up on the roof with you!”
Behind us the clinking glasses and voices faded out
as far below us
in green gold and red lights
New York shimmered, mute,
like a reflection in deep waters.
“Shall we swim?” she asked in her womanly way
and then without waiting for my answer
and without even taking off her clothes
(which I would’ve preferred)
she leapt
over
the railings.
As I rushed over I saw
the entire city
pulsing in waves of blue, green, red and gold circles below.
And then (I would’ve never believed myself capable of doing
something so utterly idiotic),
I shed my jacket, loosened my tie (as it dawned on me that
it was my last tie to earth)
and had already placed one leg up on the railing – to jump (though I
fully realized that down below there really weren’t
deep swirling waters, but, rather, asphalt streets – and still
knowing that, in spite of it all,
there was nothing to do – but jump) —
when from behind me
a pair of hands covered my eyes shut.
In disbelief I turned around
but, yes,
it was her!
And when, in a burst of indignation I wanted to curse at her
for playing such a heartless trick on me
she pressed up against me, clinging to me and whispered,
with every kiss,
how grateful she was to me for saving her life.
Only then did I notice
we were both
absolutely drenched,
and coated with silt and seaweed.
(trans. by Lalita Salins)
In Sun (Saulē)
The sun bares down so strong,
as if it held me to be a fruit
that needs to ripen in a day.
Well anything can happen…
I recline into the flower stems,
so that their scarletness
ahead of the darkness
may flow into my brains
and at the very center,
congealing in the seeds, remains.
Through eyelids like apple skins
the world reawakens golden,
and flows into me and stays glinting
like juice in a fruit, that’s ripe.
(transl. by Laila Salins)
Returning home (Mājnieks)
(Latvia, 1976 – for Saša)
Receiving us
he trembled, he shimmered, intoxicated and intoxicating —
he was
the currants, cherries, strawberries, plums,
tomatoes, parsley, dill —
from his own beds?
his own gardens?
That whole day and night
he nourished us with himself,
and toward dawn it was he, fermented by then, that we drank.
But at sunrise, when our legs no longer obeyed us,
he rose, and on his shoulders and elbows of wine he carried us
home.
When we awoke, we found him fallen into a deep sleep,
in the corner of the garden, on the ground,
frightened to see: he was no longer
vines, or berries or wine:
he was moldering earth. He lay
decaying within himself, already dead,
with roots of trees and vines
across him, and his hair matted with the leaves of many autumns.
There were roots through the hollows of his eyes, and these roots
coiled deeper,
through the hollowed eyes of others — roots entwined with barbwire
piercing his eyes in the sleep of death.
No, what am I saying! At that moment he woke,
and sensing us leaning over him — silhouetted against the towers
of Riga and of New York — he rose,
and in rising somehow gathered himself together, and
from compost became flesh,
became flesh and fruit and
berries and wine. And again
all of him trembled,
all of him shimmered,
intoxicated and intoxicating —
for one more day, one more, as short as life,
summer’s day back home.
(trans. by Bitīte Vinklere)
Meditation over wine (Meditācija ar vīnu)
Wine, as we drink it, dies. Do we notice?
Lifted, its aroma spreads, glows for a moment on our tongue,
momentarily revived, glows in our eyes,
in our laughter – and is no more.
A simple death. We, the living,
rest in the knowledge: it will come, a mouth will drink us
like wine, without inquiring from
which gardens we came.
Reverse the wine’s fermentation,
return the juice of the grape
to berries on the vine,
pour them back into the branches,
allow the berries to revert back into
flowers — and as you gaze at
the floating clouds of blossoming pollen,
consider where it all began —
the flight of bees in that moment of
April sunshine, a breeze wafting back and forth. Never
again will it pass by, nor the
bees that flew just so.
Why carry along the pollen
of these blooms – and not those — and not others?
And why, among thousands of blossoms
from which to mature, why did these berries alone
become this wine?
Ah! with a bee, with a chance breeze
is born the wine and born its drinker —
in the play of dancing pollen, in the blossom-filled air.
Wine, as we drink it, dies. Do we notice?
Lifted, its aroma spreads, glows for a moment on our tongue,
momentarily revived, glows in our eyes,
in our laughter – and is no more.
An all too simple death. We, the living,
rest in the knowledge: it will come, a mouth will drink us
like wine. A simple
death. Life — the miracle of blooming.
(trans. by Laila Salins)
The peculiar business with the monument
(Dīvainais notikums ar pieminekli)
The first to notice it were
the fishmonger women – riding the tram to the market:
“Hey, hey, whad’ya say —
she’s got a bun in the oven!”
Those who heard it turned aside:
“Bunch of nasty women! Nasty, indeed! No shame!”
But what fishmongers say just won’t go away. Soon,
with telescopes,
secretly peering through binoculars,
even the menfolk had to admit:
“Something’s going on there,
something, hmm, quite peculiar —
those fish women sure have eyes….”
Before long it was a secret no
more. Only the city’s powerful still
pretended not to see it.
But now and then
strange jolts were felt throughout Rīga:
buffet glasses and windows rattled.
Seismographers registered
tremors in the range of mild earthquakes. But the fish womens’ gaze
told another tale:
“The little one’s kickin’…” and they counted the days.
It was – must’ve been July – around noontime the whole city
turned hot and muggy. The tremors
increased. Cracks emerged from the asphalt
around Lady Freedom. Train tracks bent. The trams were halted. And then,
as the arms held upright for 35 years slid down toward her lap,
She
fell
to her knees.
When She stood back up,
at her breast was a child.
The tremors stopped. All along the boulevards
and parks thousands of folk milled about, struck by a miracle.
Calling out at dusk, the wailing fire engine trucks
appeared — hoisting up a slatted ladder.
The loudspeaker announced:
“There’s some kind of a defect in the statue…”
As darkness fell
floodlights were turned on: and there She sat —
in the beams of the rays,
at her breast — a child.
“Hush, little baby…” this voice — it hummed
through stones and through hearts.
Trouble is, the firemen were
building scaffolds around the statue and
climbing up. And, as one of them
reached out and nearly touched Her with his hands,
the sudden silence of the onlookers wafted
high above the city, above Her,
as in cathedral vaults,
and at that moment
the lights
went out.
Darkness whistled past the statue
like ropes, like ships’ cables.
And, when the floodlights came back on,
She once again stood tall – arms stretched upward.
It seemed someone was fleeing through the crowds.
“Catch him! Where’s the child?”
But catch him they couldn’t.
Later —
it’s fall now —
the fishmonger women are talking:
“That boy, how he laughs
with the mermaid’s daughters,
as for the suckling nurse —
she’s a young woman who
catches fish in her traps
others say words —
a poet perhaps….
I ask: “What’s she look like?
The fish women turn and grimace at me,
as if at the sun, as if at the sea:
“Why you still askin’?
don’cha understand?”
as a silvery salmon
is placed in my hand
(trans. by Laila Salins)
Rain (Lietū)
(in Stockholm)
I head into the rain.
I walk and walk in this rain. It is
impassable. Impassable
groves of rain, woods of rain, primeval forests of
rain. I’ve lost my way.
I’ve passed back through my life. Through my own
birth. Through my mother’s flesh.
Further back. Further. Where am I?
Rain. Rain. Impassable.
(trans. by Bitīte Vinklere)
Letter from a Christmas stable (Vēstule no Ziemassvētku kūts)
(in the Latvian countryside, dated 1976)
Yes – we’ll celebrate Christmas right in the stable. We’ll wait
for the Virgin who has conceived
the Son of God from the Holy Spirit.
(Here I stopped writing and looked at the old family Bible in its old wooden covers:
what times we live in! any newborn child
is such a wonder now it seems from the Holy Spirit. And isn’t it so?
Blasphemous talk, and yet
Where, dear God, will you abide
when all of us have died?
Epiphany, you ask? The Three Wise Men? Where
would they come from?
From the lands of the East? From the West? From the Arctic Circle? —
no, not those, they can’t be expected to come.
As for ourselves, where would we find three wise ones? We’ve got
barely two — the third’s a simpleton. Or is that another tale?
All hale, holy night!
All hale, the stable – with all its smells! The lantern throws shadows
before us. Feeling our way
barefoot, through straw — through cattles’ muzzles
and flanks. We listen to
their breathing,
mooing,
bleeting,
where,
where in this stable will a star shine forth – where will arise
the cry of
THAT CHILD?
(trans. by Bitīte Vinklere)
In the night (Naktī)
As if in the starry fields of heavens
someone had reaped star flowers —
as if someone dazzled in the heavens
had embraced a daughter of the sun —
as if the curtain of heaven had suddenly been torn open to reveal
even more heavenly heavens —
as if, spanning All, a peacock of paradise had spread its tail —
as if an All had just there begun and ended,
while with head thrown back you stand, —
while with head thrown back you stand,
someone has shiningly shot through there abovein the heavens
your life and your death.
(trans. by Laris Salins)
Concert in the Dom Cathedral, Rīga (Koncerts Doma baznīcā)
Hands. A pair of hands. Severed
on the rails in Vorkuta twenty years ago,
fitfully these hands are playing the organ,
the hands alone,
while someone else, with frostbitten amputated feet,
with feet alone,
is running along the organ pedals for twenty years now,
is running from the Arctic Circle
home.
(trans. by Bitīte Vinklere)
The Unspoken (Nepateiktais)
It rang that night.
I hurried – too late… And now I know:
it was you — calling me from the darkness —
a moment before disappearing.
No, lord knows, it’s not the words,
but the unspoken that binds us
through life and death.
(trans. by Laila Salins)
Ballet (Balets)
a half crumbled mural
A heavenbound
Christ — with eyelids closed, as if still in a dream,
with nail perforated
feet,
as if springing away from the world —
a ballet dancer.
But the midriff is gone — in its place
now invisible to my eyes
dances
the flesh of God?
(trans. by Bitīte Vinklere)
Storm in the streets (Ielās bij vētra)
A storm in the streets —
slamming the door behind us,
it hurled us together against the wall
that reeled like a woman
in dread and passion,
like you.
“Let’s run!” cried your mouth
as you forced it away from mine.
But the storm tossed it back
like a scarlet leaf
at my cheek,
my eyelids,
my throat.
Then you ran — but the street surged about you,
splashed you with lights torn from lamps and from windows
and, rising underneath you,
knocked you over —
and, with a wave,
you were swept back
into my arms.
The street enfolded us like the sea. Buildings drifted
past as they sank locked in an embrace
with their lights.
(trans. by Ruth Speirs)
Metamorphoses (Metamorfozes)
More and more ardently
I resemble earth:
I am sown,
I am mowed,
cows chew me as they
moo me
high and low they moo —
who knew
that I’m full of such melodies!
And lakes have descended within me
and rivers,
long and stumpy spawning fish
meander and gleam —
ah, my passionate fisherman’s nature!
And, speaking of waters…
wells, these wells of mine:
there the maiden lept
after her spindle,
and arrived in
my
underground –
there bread’s about to burn
there lambs must soon be shorn
there an old geezer’s been longin’ for a sauna
for a thousand years.
The tale continues…
the good sister returned above ground,
adorned in gold,
dancing up to the heavens
as the very sun.
Sure, they accuse me of
turning her head…
But all will be well,
there’s no need to wed,
I’ll frolic around her
wherever I’m led.
I’ve got waters aplenty in darkness, fields aplenty —
how sweet to lie with waters, to run with fields —
to run with fields,
to dream with stones
and be thinking thoughts with hay and straw —
must be why I’m feeling
so blissful.
And sense, also, more and more ardently
that I’ll return there, from whence I was snatched. And then
from my clay may god
bird whistles prepare and
into them blow a song
out of thin air.
(trans. by Laila Salins)
Manhattan baroque (Menhetenas baroks)
Reflections of neon lights
flood the streets with rainbows —
a floating narcosis,
synthetic somnambulism, moonstruck
movement in streets of a moonless city.
Crowds float along till three in the morning,
not sensing
that they’ve left the sidewalks,
wading
upward
along
neon rainbows.
Before sunrise —
in the final hour of narcosis —
on the topmost ledges of skyscrapers,
nylon
winged
cupids
sit.
(trans. by Ruth Speirs)
PUBLICATIONS
Anthologies:
Inara Cedrins, ed. Contemporary Latvian Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1984.
Walter Cummins, ed. Shifting Borders: East European Poetries of the Eighties. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993.
Emery George, ed. Contemporary East European Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Ruth Speirs, ed. Translations from the Latvian. Exeter: Exeter University, Exeter Books 17, pp. 16-27. (poems by Gunars Salins and Linards Tauns)
Literary journals:
Texas Quarterly, trans. Ruth Speirs, Spring, 1962, vol. V.; The Literary Review, trans. Ruth Speirs, Spring 1965.
Visions 26, trans. by Ilze Klavina-Mueller & Gunars Salins, Black Buzzard Press, 1988.
Zintis, Spring 1961, vol. 1.
Translation: The Journal for Literary Translations, trans. by Bitīte Vinklers, vol. XII, 1984.
Arena, trans. by Ruth Speirs, P.E.N. Centre for Writers in Exile, London, Nr. 10, 1962.
Scattered Voices, trans. by Velta Sniķere, the Latvian P.E.N. Centre, Stockholm, 1978.
Lituanus: The Lithuanian Quarterly: trans. by Gunars Salins & Laris Salins; (Chicago) Special Issue on Baltic Literatures, vol. 23.