Poems by Albinas Bernotas - 1972

Born into a family of peasants in the village of Urviniai, in 1958 Albinas Bernotas graduated from the department of Lithuanian language and literature at the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute. Having studied to become a teacher, specializing in literature, he taught for a while, then proceeded to work as an editor on various journals. His verse was first published in 1954. Bernotas has published eight collections of poetry, one collection of essays and has translated Russian and Polish poetry and prose into Lithuanian. His best work is on conventional themes, keeping a close focus on ordinary experience and proceeding by associative logic in delightfully measured leaps. His poems are marked by a restrained lyrical tone based on the realities of everyday life in the country and on thoughts about the history of the Lithuanian countryside.

Planets are tamed. Flame-crowned by spaceships, Earth
Skims on with me, its passenger, on board.
I boarded it initially at birth
And with my cradle since through space have soared.

Maybe I am too earthbound - maybe!
But from my boyhood I have known one law:
Bend down and pick up from the ground each bread-crumb
You noticed to have fallen on the floor.

And to this day with my maturing hand
Lifting that bread-crumb, I've held it above -
That bread-crumb - sometimes turning into flesh
And sometimes blood, the vehicle of love.

Graves, and the fight for bread live in my heart.
O peaceful tiller, what can give you wings?
You and your earth - both owe to bread
To rise above the range of earthly things.

Stars circle on their orbits overhead.
I hold a tiny bread-crumb in my hand
For you, long-tamed, no more a mistery-
Dove-coloured heavens of my fatherland.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg