Poems by Jonas Juškaitis - 1972

Born into a peasant family in the village of Kuturiai, in 1958 Jonas Juškaitis graduated from the department of history and philology at Vilnius University. His verse was first published in 1954. In Juškaitis' poetry, an impulsive use of symbols predominates, combining subconscious stirrings with the vague outlines of general conclusions.

Of bread I sing this song of mine.
Be like the bread the earth yields out of iron-bearing dust!
The titans who piled hill on hill envisaged this in their design:
Whatever cares may worry men, for the hungry bread's a must.

Through centuries they piled hills up. Through centuries they topple,
Through centuries the sun stands like a yellow-hued peony.
Through centuries the sun stands in the sky. And with the single
Old man-and-rye metamorphosis, Mother Earth kept groaning.

And this song, like the smell of snowball-trees,
Arises from the bones of ploughmen.

The fall of hills that we pile up is heard intoning
In the thunderpeals of wars, when Sister's eyes, sad-gleaming,
Dilate over my heart, mortally hurt.

And for my heart
One kind of thunderpeal alone has meaning;
When millstones with calamities start groaning.

Let craters roar on planets as they watch the lump of bread
That men break off on holidays for beggars to be fed.
And when there's nothing left at all with which life may be led,
Then save us, bread!

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg