Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
Mantas Balakauskas: letter from Rome
Translated from the Lithuanian by Alfred Corn
books sometimes appear
and sometimes the god of winds whisks away our thoughts
and again capital letters drift away
from book titles from names
from lives
punctuation marks no longer impede
words
they fly off to other lips
and build a nest in ashtrays
I’d really like to tell you everything
but there in the cities we once fully trusted
white noise dominates
because of that we more and more forget
that it’s already january already february already march
ice has already left the rivers
and most often
time has passed us by
yet again rowan berries
are determined to ripen
autumn is approaching
with a great migration of refugees…
~~~~
laiškas iš Romos
kažkada pasirodo knygos
kažkada Eolo vėjas nubloškia tavo mintis
ir vėl nutolsta didžiosios raidės
iš pavadinimų iš vardų
iš gyvenimų
skyrybos ženklai nebesulaiko
žodžių
jie išskrenda į kitas lūpas
ir susuka lizdus peleninių urnose
taip norėčiau tau išsakyt viską
bet miestuose kuriais besąlygiškai tikėjome
karaliauja baltasis triukšmas
per jį vis lengviau užsimirštam
kad jau sausis jau vasaris jau kovas
jau ledai paliko upes
ir laikas mus aplenkė
bent keletą kartų
štai ir vėl nepaliaujamai noksta
šermukšniai
artėja ruduo
didysis tautų kraustymasis – –
~~~~
Copyright 2016 Mantas Balakauskas
Translation copyright 2025 Alfred Corn
Mantas Balakauskas studied history at the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences. In 2013 he received the Pushkin Prize at the Druskininkai Poetic Fall festival. He co-founded the Slinktys cultural society in 2015, and his debut poetry collection Rome was published in 2016. Rome was nominated as one of the five best poetry books in the Book of the Year Campaign. The book was also awarded with Zigmas Gėlė prize for the best poetry debut.
Alfred Corn has received Guggenheim, NEA, and NYFA fellowships, an Award in Literature from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and the Dillon, Blumenthal, and Levinson Prizes from Poetry magazine. His many books include The Returns: Collected Poems (Press 53, 2022).
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
what a marvelous letter from Romos where the many sights and sounds tourists so regularly note have been covered over by white noise while only the seasons turn with their expected outcomes but also an emerging rush of refugees— so appropriate as a sign of our broken times.
Balakauskas is the first poet I’ve encountered who’s written in this letter’s punctuation-free manner while at the same time directly signaling to the reader he is abstaining from punctuation and caps right from the get go of the poem.
We have a ways to go in the discombobulated world we’ve produced, and this poem points at our jagged situation. Corn and Balakauskas brush Romos with sad brio, beautiful ugliness for all to see or hear
LikeLiked by 1 person
Beautifully said, Jim. Thank you!
>
LikeLiked by 1 person