LITUANUS LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES   Volume 26, No. 3 - Fall 1980 Editor of this issue: Birutė Cipliauskaitė ISSN 0024-5089 Copyright © 1980 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc.

SIX POEMS
BY
ALEKSIS RANNIT

SMALL BEGINNING

The name of time
    is
        namelessness,
rivers,
        eyeless,
                    forlorn.

Beauty
         is
            death of face,
cast into purity of form.

DIOSKORIDES — TO BYRON

Stay,
    poet of thunder,
hear through my silence
                                    and know:
dearer to me
                   than lightning
the syllables'
                    gradual
                               flame.

LOVE

From life's living name
the flame to distance
                            melting out

slowly into silence
                            veils,

but the word still comes
a marvel to our lips —

amor librorum
nos unit.

To Ants Oras

THE END OF AN UNWRITTEN POEM

Rhythm —
wild strawberry,
ripening dark —
                        innermost
line
of the stream.

SISTER

This
    is your heart at its prime —
enamel's tightening seal,
your voice's innocent light
above
the frigid sea.

Why did they have to condemn you?
And why has your shawl
slipped from your arm?

On the floor of the wellspring
your song
            settles down.

To Betti Alver

WORD

You came to my room
and your motion's
every phrase

just opening
blossomed into vows.

And in our emptied vase
now thriving delightedly
always your hand's word.

All six poems translated from the Estonian by Henry Lyman.