translated from the Lithuanian by Ellen Hinsey
In the factory, behind bars, or on the throne
he remained a peasant. He knew how to separate wheat
from chaff, to yoke muscular oxen. Thus, the farmer’s expert
art was felt by tool and animal alike—including humans.
A whip. Straw. He knew from friends and enemies what to expect.
Then, having overcome all evil, he sought to fashion
A new being. Among city pleasures, he preferred theatre.
For when the future neared, and almost all had sagely
confessed their errors, all he required was a stage.
Where once was rubbish, a Babylon of marble and jasper
arose. The colossal hall could enfold: St. Peters,
Notre-Dame and Westminster—all at once—the enormous
balcony empty: so the silhouette on the terrace
became an exclamation mark to stun the masses—both spy and milkmaid—
on that vast expanse of Champs-Élysées—(laid
out after the original, but greater, and, alas, not in Paris).
Still, we frequently err. He entered a different Elysium field,
under charred earth, in the heat, beneath the tilted cross
and Red Star (asking both to have mercy upon him).
Above the grave, the fading national flag’s colors,
And, like heads with open mouths, artificial flowers
puzzled, fill the faience of a stained cup’s rim.
A leaflet flutters, embossed with: “Thanks for freedom,”
for to merely say sic transit would be too mundane.
Further off: deserted spaces, windows’ worn playing cards.
A strip of sky gleams like glue on an envelope
torn by a censor. The capital never learned to weep.
Rusty, sclerotic pipes. Joblessness and hardship.
A million homeless children (for he had abortion banned)
and stray dogs. Here, that Christmas never ends—
when a tarpaulin, like a bloodied husk was placed over,
and a dozen handfuls of black dirt covered
the one who believed, until death, he was loved by the people.
A crow reigns among leaves; meager poplars rustle,
and a schoolboy closes a book, barely a second look,
never memorizing his name.
Tomas Venclova was born in Klaipėda, Lithuania, in 1937. From 1956 on he took part in the Lithuanian and Soviet dissident movements and was one of the five founding members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group. His circle included writers such as Akhmatova, Pasternak, Brodsky, and Miłosz, among others. He has written more than twenty-five books in Lithuanian, Russian, and English. His volumes include poetry, criticism, literary biography, interviews, and works on Vilnius. His two-volume history of Lithuania was published in 2018 and 2019. Venclova has been the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including the Lithuanian National Prize, the Prize of Two Nations, which he received jointly with Czesław Miłosz, the New Culture of New Europe Prize, the Qinhai International Poetry Prize, the Vilenica International Literary Prize, and the Petrarca Prize. His works in English include The Grove of the Eumenides: Selected and New Poems, forthcoming from Bloodaxe Books in 2025, Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova, The Junction: Selected Poems of Tomas Venclova, Vilnius: A Personal History, Forms of Hope, Winter Dialogue, and Aleksander Wat: Life and Art of an Iconoclast.
Ellen Hinsey is the international correspondent for New England Review. She is the author of nine books of poetry, essay, dialogue and translation. Her most recent book, The Illegal Age, explores the rise of authoritarianism. A new book-length sequence, The Invisible Fugue, is forthcoming in 2023. Hinsey’s essays are collected in Mastering the Past: Reports from Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. Hinsey’s other poetry collections include Update on the Descent, The White Fire of Time and Cities of Memory (Yale University Series Award). Hinsey has also edited and co-translated The Junction: Selected Poems of Tomas Venclova. Her work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Irish Times, Poetry and New England Review. A former fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, she has most recently been a visiting professor at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany.
To learn more about Tomas Venclova, read his interview with Ellen Hinsey.