Kornelijus Platelis
Poet, essayist and translator, born on 22 Jan.1951 in Šiauliai, Lithuania, graduated from Vilnius Engineering Building Institute in 1973 and worked as a construction engineer until 1988. Since 1980 he has published over ten selections of poetry and two of essays. He has translated many poets’ works including books by T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Czesław Miłosz, Seamus Heaney, and Robert Bringhurst, and developed commentary for a new Lithuanian edition of the Old Testament. His poems have been translated into many languages and published at home and abroad including books in Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, and USA. He is a member of Lithuanian P.E.N. Centre since 1989 and President in 1991-1995 and 2003-2007. He is the initiator and Chairman of the Board of the annual international literary festival Druskininkai Poetic Fall. After the liberation of Lithuania in 1990 he served as deputy Minister of Culture and Education of Lithuania, deputy mayor of Druskininkai, director of VAGA Publishers in Vilnius, Minister of Education and Science of Lithuania, editor-in-chief of the literary weekly Literature & Art, and he currently serves as president of the Lithuanian Association of Artists, board member of the National Radio and Television, board member of the Fund for Press, Radio and Television. Among his many honors and awards is the Lithuanian National Award for Culture and Arts (2002).
https://www.rasytojai.lt/en/platelis-kornelijus-2/
Milk and Tomatoes
she left a note: dearest
buy two bottles of milk and two
tomatoes he thought for a long time
having read the note sitting on the kitchen
stool how white milk is in a glass
creamy and white
as the skin of her face
it will flow past lips into the belly
then she will wipe herself with a white
napkin while tomatoes
are red as lips their juice
flows down the marble chin
until a white hand wipes it away
(tomatoes are so juicy!)
her eyes will shine with desire
she will be wearing a white dress
or a checked skirt
he will definitely buy
two bottles of milk and two
tomatoes
September 1978
An Encounter at Dusk
While looking out the library window
At the dusk of winter,
The shelves suddenly open and a boy enters
Carrying a basket of apples and roses.
And the darkness thickens, thoughts tangle.
Today – he says –
A very strange thing happened to me:
I was walking down the orchard path and found myself
In a gloomy room with shelves,
Filled with rectangular slabs.
A sad man stood there looking out the window
At the dusk of winter.
November 1983
Apples
In trolley number 5 on the last seat
Next to a dozing old man from Gerontion,
A bag of red apples on my lap. Not for Paris,
Not for Alexander, but for my children, my family.
Unwittingly the apples of my breasts pulsate with juices.
The young man near the door across from me on the step,
Fixing his gaze on the apples, the juices, the reward,
Gathers, it seems, something from the shadows of his soul.
Between his legs the root of life begins to grow,
The uncontrollable horn stiffens, and he reddens in shame.
The old man, seeing that, wakes and begins to chuckle.
The young man, flustered, gets off at the first stop.
The old man continues chuckling, my body grows numb,
His juices begin to rage. I try to get out
At the next stop but my forgotten bag
Falls off my lap and the red apples spill out.
Undelivered reward. The old man laughs
And begins picking up the apples. Not for Alexander,
Not for Paris, but for my children, my family. I get off.
Back past the old voices, past the faces of Achivi.
May the gods send him his soul’s most beautiful woman.
January 2001
Zone
Where does it end, where does it begin?
Ventilation pipes on the flat roof drone
Like eternity. The landing force,
As they are called, climbs
On a metal truss that holds silos of sawdust,
To the chimney extending
From the varnishing shop, reach the top
And smell the terrifying mix of odors
That the ventilator vomits into the darkened sky,
Holding on to the metal beam
With arms and legs.
They hang that way until they shake off
This world and fall in
To the zone.
The physician’s assistant, cursing,
Puts casts on arms and legs,
Wipes blistered lips
And noses with stinking ointment.
The landing force, as they are called,
One by one return in
To the zone.
January 1987
Fifty-Year-Old Women
You have to wait a long time to know them,
lurk in the thickets of experience, senses tensed,
clenching the heart’s fading heat in your chest.
Their souls are cautious and fearful as ermine,
breakable, even though they have shells,
in their hearts more indulgent benevolence
than fire, which could be extinguished
by an accidental wind, and in their movements
less passion than skill. They are the first to see
the one who lies in wait. On their lips the simplest words
ring more luxuriously than these lines.
They spend more on cosmetics
and keep longer company with mirrors.
They press close so gently, so cautiously,
boldly and timidly, as if hoping for something
and expecting nothing, that the soul stirs.
You have to wait a long time to know them,
but there are no more elegant creatures in the world.
November 2000
St. Elizabeth’s Hospital
for Craig Czury
Our dynasty came because of a great sensibility.
Ezra Pound, Canto 85
Across the Anacostia River, among the trees,
St. Elizabeth slices a round cake
with a long shining knife and politely serves it
to the students of the poetry t-group waiting in line.
Their arms are bound along their bodies to the elbow,
their eyes are as round as a cake sun,
they stretch oddly as they eat: it is the destiny
of poetry to repair consciousnesses and worlds. Suddenly
a telephone rings, calling for St. Elizabeth,
she hands over the knife and asks me to continue slicing.
As the long blade travels from one hand to the other
the sun bounces off and flashes in their eyes
chopping up their roundness like the knife
the cake. The world splinters
into myriad fragments and for a moment
congeals before crumbling. I
Our dynasty came
because of a great sensibility.
After all the pavilions of our palaces
I now look through John Howard’s window
In the shadow of leafless trees
into the new age across the river.
Our minds were somewhere else
when the gates opened.
Our dynasty rested upon a strict hierarchy
contemplating beauty.
The walls dissolved years ago
as I listened to forbidden places.
Our dynasty established order in poetry
and gushed through the edges of form.
Inner voice? Each of us got many
inner voices. Which would you like to hear?
Our dynasty was hospitalised
because of its great faith.
The new world injected us with tranquilizers
and our consciousnesses turned to wood.
St. Elizabeth took us into her care
and love dissolved our will.
The founders of the world of equal values
took to healing us with our own poetry.
The inexhaustible milk in St. Elizabeth’s pitcher
undermined the hierarchies’ foundations.
stick the blade into the cake, splintered
reality holds together, an odd hope that already shined
through the cracks seals over. The poetry
t-group students meekly lower their eyes.
The balsam of words oozes through the cell walls –
glue of things and consciousnesses with bandaged arms –
the metal taste in my mouth is changed by the sweetness of cake,
returning us to harmonies, opening up
memory’s roads to nowhere.
_____________________________________________________________
Parts of a poetry fusion made by Craig Czury from the works of current patients at St. E’s Hospital are used in this text.
August 1999
Translated into English by Jonas Zdanys
zdanysj@sacredhearth.edu
