Читать книгу Skylarks and Rebels - Rita Laima - Страница 16

THIRD ELEGY

Strange to hail from almost anonymous shores

in overexplored Europe where the Baltic

still hides a lunar side, unilluminated

except for subjugations, annexations

which continue unabated for centuries.

No problem for anyone to name the Nordic countries

from Iceland to Finland,

but how about the Baltic ones?

Surely one and the same language

is spoken there? If not Russian,

at least something akin to German?

You will never guess unless we unravel

the skein of Indo-European and Finno-Ugric

language families, ponder Babel

to clear up the Baltic,

and who has time for such marginal myths?

We persist with the subsoil. Grass is another

favored metaphor (trampled upon, it springs back),

or limestone cliffs filed away by gales

yet undefiled, withstanding millennia.

It is strange to hail from the dark side of the moon

while supposedly we inhabit the same planet.

There are Third World pockets inside Europe

one tends to overlook, anonymous shores

marked with an x or a mental question mark.

If only you incline in the Baltic direction,

you begin to hear the dirge of a beehive

and perceive in underwater outline

an amber chamber built with pollen of grief.

Ivar Ivask. Baltic Elegies.

Norman, Oklahoma: World Literature Today, 1987.

Translated by Valters Nollendorfs