Māra Zālīte

The clearing speaks

I wouldn’t open my mouth if I wasn’t sure

you felt the same.

I’m confused. Full of shame. I don’t know

what is old in me, what is new.
Naked. Exposed. Empty.
Cleaned out. Guilty of change.
Maybe relieved?

Roots no longer draw juices,

don’t tear my flesh like cloth
as they dig deeper and deeper,
stretch further and further.
Trunks no longer stand tall
like farmers in revolt.
Magnificent torsos!
They sleep in a warehouse now,
wait their turn at the saw
to be sliced like bread.
I worry, worry about the pine,
the pine that grew
close to my heart.
Don’t tremble dear, don’t fear,
you were not cut for kindling
— I tried to calm her and myself –
but to be the foundation of a room.
I hope so. I do hope so.

I must now close my eyes against the sun,

for I no longer have shelter of foliage
to offer me shade
like a young girl offers a green jug
by a well.
Shade, which once allowed mushrooms to grow.

O, what a passion
for mushrooms, what desire!
Even the smartest ladies
drove here from Riga,
and on finding the chanterelle places,
their joy was as great
as that of gold-diggers finding gold.

In vain
I muse about lost days
when I was still a forest.
I find myself strangely still — I’m startled
when I spot some cranberries! What if they’re
drops of my blood?
And the morels — scabs over wounds?

As I begin life anew,

I’m riddled with tree stumps
like a mouth full
of dead teeth.
With holes, scarred, as if by sulphuric acid,
disfigured by remains of fires
where the last branches were burned.
I can only accept with wonder
all the new created in me —
pines the size of dwarfs,
elbow-length small birch
young willows, maples, linden, bird-cherries…
An oak like a salad…

Flowers of many colors, a robe

I throw over my nakedness,
I survey my surroundings,
the hospital ward
where I’ve been near death.
Is it a loss? Or a victory?

Already tomorrow I’ll escape into words

like a partisan escapes into woods.
At the horizon, a gold sun glitters,
but far away, so very far.

In the dense pine stand of thought

I’ll burrow into the darkness of a bunker.
I don’t know love, how many days.
I don’t know love, how many nights.

By a candle as by a bonfire
I’ll sing the oldest of songs
about friends fallen in battle
a loaded pen at their shoulder.
I’ll escape into words before
I’m discarded like an empty bottle.
Taking with me — only cigarettes
and a flower pot with a bit of earth
from my homeland.

A heavy wheel turns nearby.

I must get off the road.
But I can’t get off the road
because I am the road.

In the evenings water lilies

close their shutters
and lock themselves in.

They also are afraid

of the dark.

They also don’t know

that for the dark
there is no obstacle.

Riga in water

In water. In water
guides, tourists, brick walls and musicians,
knights and d-jays,
cobblestones and asphalt,
church spires, gutters and internets,
punks and brothers of the sword,
cloister nuns and night moths —
in water. In water
bastions, church organs,
guildhalls, town halls, city halls and computers,
the Cours, wars, choirs and graveyards,
markets, bridges, tanks and harpsichords,
banks and firing squads, fear and independence,
ramparts, shop keepers, dams, and sand hills,
ships’ masts and water —
in water.

“Riga conforms to anthropogeographic logic” —

a blurb from the encyclopedia,
but I say:
the most important thing in this place
is breathing
because
Riga is in water.
Riga herself is in water.
Riga herself is in water.
In water, in water.

Centuries sink like an axe into water.

Time is killed and thrown into water.
The people drawing water, themselves – into water,
The people pouring water, themselves – into water.

It is fall again.
Eternity signs off on water.
Water.

That’s why I say:

The most important thing in this place
is breathing.

Breath — full of wind, the head of a new poet,

breath — wind dancing in swirling skirts,
wind — in revolving doors of concert halls,
wind — in windpipes, vocal chords, voiced consonants,
in vowels, in rhymes.
In the tremor of musical triangles,
jingling brass trim of Liv shawls — wind —
wind created by theatre applause.
Breath — of English horns, Russian concertinas,
troubadours, crooners, eternal showmen…
Music, music — wind —
in opera curtains, bagpipes, bassoons
willow pipes, bugles, trumpets,
lamentation and exultation
in castles and gatehouses — wind —
breath, soul, respiration,
above the water the spirit takes deep breaths
with the lungs of a Christmas choir.
Gills expand like the Dom Cathedral organ.
Breath expands insanely
through the abyss of lost centuries.

“Riga conforms to anthropogeographical logic”

But I know
the most important thing in this place
is breathing,
because
it is fall again.
Eternity signs off on water:
Water.

All around hills of sand.

Living sand.
Riga herself in water.
Living water.

Living Riga.

Mother, father and I

Sometimes almost, almost

I believe the newspaper babble,
that in place of a father I have NATO
in place of a mother I have the UN,
and to support me as an orphan
soon in my palm will be a Euro.

Then I head for the woods much greener

than the greenest flag of the greenest party.
I head for the fields more colorful
than the most colorful market.
I roam the hills
that spill tenderly into each other
like the earth and the sky,
like mother and father,
when they were young like I.

Then I sit at the edge of a river

the river is my mother
— as warm as milk.
Warm as a tear on a cheek.

Then I look at the sky

and my father appears —
as he did at the railway station long ago,
when for the holidays I came home.

I am with my mother, and I will be

when I'm covered by the green grass
which, like a blanket, briefly slides off.

I am with my father as I will be

when this watch stops in my chest
like a used foreign auto.

That's why I scream like a child

don't bother me with your orphan's courts —
I'm not an orphan!
Don't find a place for me
in the orphanage!

It's too like a farm

where feelings are groomed for slaughter,
and thoughts are intended for export
to some orphan country.

In exile

I count the hours in this strange place

and look as the sky bends
over the mountain tops and bushes
like a tired woman leaning
over a wood stove
smoking bitterly.

I count the hours in this strange place.

Nothing pertains to me.
I could or could not be here
as the tired woman
ladles the thick night
into a bowl.
I count the hours in this strange place.
Everything turns from me
and smothers in the deep ash of the fire.
Only the tired woman
covers the table for tomorrow
with a black cloth.

Tracks

You like leaving me tracks —

a white stone disturbed, a broken branch,
a vibrating swarm of mosquitoes
drawn to warmth just dispersing
the sharp scent of trampled lovage —
right here, right now, this instant…
Who are you?
Only an empty seed
falling straight from heaven.

Commotion among aspen leaves,

the eerie presence of dragonflies trembling in air,
bent-grass whispers and pine bark
cracks, dry like the Gobi desert,
the sharp scent of trampled lovage —
right here, right now, this instant. . .
Who are you?
Only an empty seed
falling straight from heaven.

You disappear without a trace.

At the edge of a pond

I let the fish spawn in me
And the seaweed heal me.
I let the wind inhale me
while weevils destroy a flower.
I bloom to make a landing strip for dragonflies,
hold myself high as a skyscraper
so even a bird may land.
Where will the daughters of the sun go today
so splendidly dressed?
The water glitters, glimmers, deceives
hiding water fleas in its grasses.
There is a fortune gift-wrapped here.
Indestructible metal shines at the end of a string.
The reflection of a lucky catch — very near.
Crouching in a coltsfoot leaf,
leaning against a bulrush,
lying on a water lily,
swinging on the tip of a sweetflag,
the poem continues. . .

Only a bird flies over the moaning,

scaring a pair of frog lovers.

The poet and Plato

The classical verse about hay,

really, not as dystrophic
as the strophes you forge without moderation.

Of course, who writes verse by chance?

Go on, flatter yourself flatterer
you extend beyond yourself like infinite space.

Breath
I only want warmth, just breath.

Like a stuck record you turn

round Plato's State.

Best turn me around

with a verse
that grows out of divine earth.
Where is your plough,
you, ploughman? Scold me.
Well, scold.

You can't even do that.

Poems haunted by Chaks*

About alleys, valleys and faces.

About poems haunted by Chaks.
I like to roam, now and then.
I like the madness.

My heart craves a romp in plowed fields

like Crave (the dog I once had,
with black and white sides, like March).
I'll plow, I'm allowed and don't warn me,
that this field has already been plowed.
The same as Crave my heart craves
to jump over syllables,
to say to a poetry critic — get lost!
I think
about ceka, cheka, Chaks
as I sniff history.
And hate wakes in me, starts rafting,
rafting which won't end until
next year in March.
How can you do this? — I know you'll say.
But hate wells up in me. Oozes
like an overripe mango — and disintegrates.
O, you wanted pure Chaks, did you!
To whom do I say this? Myself, of course.
I revenge myself by loving.

Loving this suit, so elegantly fashioned,

Loving the bald head like a shaved underarm,
Loving this pen, for which all is as one —
whether it's a toilet, the Kremlin or love.
I revenge myself, writing these poems.
These poems haunted by Chaks.

By the time hate quiets in me,

it will be March again —
white-sided, like eternity.

Translated by Margita Gailitis