Hurricane | “Leaving the subway…” | Landscape with Polyphemus

Hurricane

For now, just this greenish flashing on the screen.

Its spiral turns and twitches. “This has become the norm.”

It will reach us, perhaps, the day after next.

The skyscraper will sway like an airplane crossing the continent’s edge,

dead rats will float above flooded subway platforms,

the car alarm will sound then subside, like a wounded man,

airports will not have enough cots for sleeping.

Some will lose their lives—we don’t yet know their names.

The suburban family, while grocery stores still work,

purchases cereal. The husband

wanted to evacuate farther from shore, but not the wife.

It’s not clear if it’s safer in the basement or on the second floor

(the oak’s roots are still shallow, so it could crash through the roof).

The children shouldn’t hear this argument.

And, for that matter, they don’t: they’re petting the dog,

reading Spiderman to each other,

content that school is out, and

darkness is quite good for hide-and-seek

for it’s easy to scare the adults

by jumping out of the hallway

before a cozy night spent in a sleeping bag.

Children, despite all, don’t behave differently

even when the family must weigh whether to cross borders or stay—

nobody waits for them elsewhere, and the chaos at home

might well come to an end. Usually, those arguments

are too late, for the door is already being rattled

by thin young men with lightning bolts on their uniforms,

or a threshing line of soldiers with green tunics sweeps

through the farmstead, or freedom fighters hurry

to off the collaborators, or a mob with machetes approaches.

The human being, as we know, is the only creature

on Earth with the wisdom to be mightier

than the elements. For only he knows how

to distinguish dialects and the shapes of skulls,

to determine who belongs to the wrong clan, class,

or nation—who’s game is up.

It’s light outside the window (the peony blooms, the oriole sings)

because the weather is always good for those who win.

At long last, it is good for us. The flash on the screen

slides off to the north. A telephone booth, uprooted

from its foundation, lies on the sidewalk,

and the boardwalk has but one lamp left,

yet the ground steams with warmth. The dog

races with the children. The trees stand firm. The world

remains the same as it ever was.

***

for E. K.

Leaving the subway with a pack on my back,

I catch the mixed scent of refuse and seaweed.

Water laps on the other side of the colonnade.

Before—there was no sphinx on the quay,

Thank God for that. Back then, in my youth,

I imbibed those mists every morning.

A physicist lived here. Later,

He moved to the suburbs up north

(More than an hour’s bumpy ride on a tramway).

A poet often visited him:

Poems, the news from prison,

Dirty dishes, the tinkle of glassware.

In the old flat, under a dusty lamp,

I sometimes waited for beauty to arrive.

Look at the photograph. A heath-covered

Hill on the isthmus where swift river rapids

Rinse bunkers. Homeless skerries

Of Finnish granite huddle near shore.

A city spreads over the horizon—

Once condemned to death, as Akhmatova said.

An underwater staircase slides into Neptune’s

Realm. A country we don’t know how to imagine

Sketches itself beyond the tower.

We already sense there is not much time.

We return, forcing ourselves to laugh,

And May nights silently gather

In the well of the high-windowed courtyard.

What do we want? From what deep layer

Of memory does the echo, steeped in emptiness,

Hatch? Out of what substance

Are the threads of our parting wound?

Where will we die? What angel will bring

Unseen life along this ground?

Why do cellos, harps, and oboes

Swim down to us through dark skies?

Five streets in a knot. I spent those years

Right here. It seems I recognize the spot

Along the fence where a lost cat

Shelters under the crest of a wall.

Rainwater drips from the gutters.

The poplar at the crossroads has grown old.

Night spreads itself out. A damp reflection

Touches the rusty but still resonant

Tin roof. The apartment air vent rattles

A hundred paces from the cold canal.

This is a simple city composition—

The whiteness of branches, the blackness of rocks.

We are not alone. The word turns to smoke.

Great fires rise above the colonnade.

***

Landscape with Polyphemus

In ruddy mountain depths—deep caves drone in emptiness.

Cold frosts the path. Water trembles in clear autumn’s reign.

Like an attentive blind man, the landscape snags our voices—

With his calloused ears, his knots of nerves, his giant’s brain.

Don’t hide from fate, relish the day and—thick with salt—

The line of spume that marks the sand at low tide.

Wind plucks the trees, ruffles the grass, wrecks the fireside—

The pit blackens far away, on the heights, like an eye-socket.

The sky purifies, and God’s hands crumple the star-map.

Bright lights all night: November flashes white copper.

The Leonids pound city thresholds with interstellar flak,

While channels and cliffs fall to death in a twofold fire.

“Ciklonas” is from Eumenedžių giraitė. Vilnius: Versus aureus, 2010. Others unpublished.

Image by Thomas Colligan.