Poetry
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Laima VincÄ— is a graduate of the Columbia University School of the Arts MFA program in Creative Writing. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Fulbright lectureships, a PEN Translation grant, and an Academy of American Poets award, among other honours. Her memoir in diary form of her student years at Vilnius University in 1988-1989 during the time of Lithuania's singing revolution was published in 2008 by the Lithuanian Writers' Union Publishers as Lenin's Head on a Platter. Her novel for children, The Ghost in Hannah's Parlour, was translated into Lithuanian (VaiduoklÄ— SvetainÄ—je) and was selected by Lithuanian Radio and Television as one of the top five books published for children in 2007.
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Laima VincÄ— is the translator of Marcelijus Martinaitis's collection K.B. The Suspect, published by White Pines Press. She is also the translator of Juozas Lukša's Forest Brothers (Central European University Press), an account of Lithuania's post-war armed resistance against the Soviet Union. Writing under the name Laima Sruoginis, she is the editor and translator of three anthologies of contemporary Lithuanian literature: The Earth Remains (Columbia University Press), Lithuania in Her Own Words (Tyto Alba), and Raw Amber (Poetry Salzburg). Laima Sruoginis is also the translator of My Voice Betrays Me (Vanda JuknaitÄ—, Columbia University Press), Just One Moment More (Konstancija BražienienÄ—, Columbia University Press), and Letters from Nowhere (Jonas Mekas, Paris Experimental).
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Laima VincÄ— has published her poems in Poetry Daily, The Artful Dodge, Agni and other journals. She also writes as a journalist on contemporary social issues in Lithuania.
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2008
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National Translation Month 2017: Five Lithuanian Poets in Translation by Laima Vince
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Poems by Laima Vince
Volume 52, No. 1 - Spring 2006
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Meditating in Guru
Padmasambhava’s Cave
The Tiger’s Nest, Bhutan
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We climbed high into the mountain
To reach Taktshang—
The Tiger’s Nest.
Here Guru Padmasambhava was set down
Off the back of Yeshe Tshogyal,
The Flying Tigress,
His loyal consort.
Having ascended,
We descended
Deep inside—
Her tight stone womb.
This is where Guru Rimpoche
Meditated for three years,
Three months, and three days.
We meditated.
The mountain breathed,
And we breathed with it.
The Blue-Eyed Buddha
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In the monasteries of Bhutan
The Buddhas have blue eyes—
So that they may be somehow
Not of this world.
And so now we,
The blue-eyed,
Have journeyed to Bhutan,
Carrying our curiosity
With us on our backs
Along with our dark minds.
We hope to take some wisdom
From the land of the dragon
Back to our overcrowded cities,
Buzzing with humanity,
Displays of light,
That never cease to blink
Despite our talk
Of global warming
And the need
To cut back
Our excesses.
And so, I stand
Before the blue-eyed Buddha
My own blue-green eyes common
Where I come from.
Oh Bhutan,
Dream of the last Shangri-La,
Kingdom of mountain peaks,
Where wisdom
Has not dissipated,
Like the clouds
That entangle themselves
Around your craggy cliffs.
Where a benevolent King
Loves his people still.
And welcomes us,
The blue-eyed,
To his kingdom.
Preparing for The Next Life
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Circumambulating the stupa in Thimphu,
Elderly Bhutanese women,
Earnestly walk clockwise,
Twirling their prayer wheels, chanting,
Preparing themselves for life's eternal journey.
They all wear purple—
Purple jackets, sweaters, blouses, shawls,
Long purple kiras.
All my life I've loved the color purple—
I've worn purple coats, purple sweaters, purple dresses.
I've even painted entire rooms in my house purple.
I fit right in
That moving crowd of purple
And prayer.
Excused from housekeeping,
Tending grandchildren,
They spend their final days here,
In the shadow of the stupa.
When they are called
They will be ready.
Circumambulating the Stupa
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Circumambulating the stupa
I am tempted to take a photo,
Shoot a video, be the tourist.
But why would I throw
Such a precious opportunity away?
The chance to cleanse my soul?
What is it I cannot let go of?
My good training as a consumer?
The wish to possess everything
I can lay my hands on?
Take it away with me
As an image locked
Inside my iPhone—
Stored securely on the cloud.
The camera seeks to capture the present
But by the time the shutter releases
The present is gone—
It is a fool's game.
Embrace the present
With each footstep
That takes you
Around the stupa—
That is your challenge—
Even if it means
Going around in circles
For eternity
Until you get it right.
Poem for My Lingerie Left Behind in Bhutan
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I am down to one nightdress now,
Having left my pink lingerie
Hanging on a hook on the bathroom door
In a hotel in Bhutan.
I don't like to wear much when I sleep—
Not because I imagine myself sexy
In my 52-year-old body,
But because I don't like to be burdened.
Bedclothes entwine like vines
Around my body
As I twist and turn
In my solitary dreams.
I imagine my flimsy pink shift—
The one I wore to bed with my last lover—
Discovered by a modest girl
Who works in the hotel.
A girl who picks up after us tourists.
A relief to be freed
Of standing ankle deep
In the murky waters
of the family rice paddies.
A modern girl.
After I've gone,
Surreptitiously she slips
The lingerie inside the bountiful sleeves
Of her traditional silk jacket,
Then waits until she is home again
To pull it out—
Like those magicians
Who produce lengths of silk
From a single tin can—
The soft fabric endless as eternity.
When no one in the family is looking
She tucks the lingerie inside a drawer
In a wooden commode
Painted with Buddhist symbols.
Perhaps that drawer is her only private place
In a home overfilled
With doting parents, grandparents,
Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles,
And lazy dogs who recline in the dust
All day long, silently,
And who bark incessantly
All night long.
Every once in a while
She slips the lingerie out
Of its secret place
And imagines
Herself wearing it.
Perhaps entreating a lover
Or a future husband
Or simply wearing it
As her own private delight.
Or maybe she slips it on
Beneath her Kira, her daily dress—
A long sheath of silk fabric
Wound cleverly thrice about her body,
The front panel folded in a neat crease.
The lacy decollete hidden
Beneath her blouse—
Her own private delight.
A careless item
Left behind by a rich visitor
To her even richer land.
Will she carry something of my soul
When she wears the lingerie?
Or will her spirit
Inhabit it now?
Or will her spirit
Mingle with mine?
Merge into one?
Cleanse my sins?
Prolong my life?
How good it is to leave something behind,
Even if it is only by accident.
Even if it is just the shed skin
Of a liaison with a lost lover—
A relic from a time
When my body was lithe,
And sensuous,
And gave pleasure—
A body now prepared
To step naked into eternity.
She may keep the shift
With my blessing—
That careless scrap of fabric
A swath of a woman's past.
On the Thirty-Year Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, June 4, 2019:
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Oh China,
You have blackened my lungs
And broken my heart.
Oh China,
I long for your earth’s
Dusty yellow embrace.
Oh China,
How will I live now,
Knowing I may never again wander
Your royal spaces, temples, ancient parks,
Follow your undulating clay walls?
Oh China,
I have removed your beads from my wrists,
But I still dream of your Buddhas,
The glare of your neon lights,
Racing into the future,
Your hacking, spitting old men,
Aiming at my wheels as I glide past,
The perpetual smell of smoke in the air.
Oh China,
I have fallen under your spell—
The mystical, the modern,
The ancient, the authoritarian,
All flowing into one.
Oh China,
How can I ever feel my own balance again
If I may no longer
Dip into your ten-lane chaos of traffic
On my flimsy yellow bicycle?
Oh China,
With your obscene politics,
Your murdered millions,
Your silenced Tiananmen dead,
Your indoctrination camps,
And your people—
Generous to a fault,
Curious, kind.
As I flew over Siberian ice shields,
Making my exit,
It pained me to know
I may never come back,
Never again listen—ting ma?
To your gongs, your drums,
Your street chatter—
Be one in sync
With the flow of Beijing’s
Twenty-two million registered,
And million or so more
Uncounted, undocumented.
Oh China,
My longing for you will never cease.
It will be an ever-present ache,
Like a beloved gone silent,
Who I long for, always.
Morning Commute in Beijing
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Just beyond Tiananmen Square on a frigid winter day
We bicyclists pause at an enormous Beijing intersection.
We are like runners, our legs quivering on the racing block,
Waiting for the light to turn—only there is never a light for us.
Beside me, on an electric scooter sits a family of three.
Manning the scooter is the handsome young father,
Tense with responsibility, behind him his wife, clutching a net bag of garlic
With one hand and his waist with the other.
Crouching in front is their little boy,
Warm and cozy inside the scooter’s quilt body sleeve.
From inside his quilt lotus-patterned womb
Wearing a fuzzy brown hat with cub ears
He pokes his little head out to look around him.
The light changes. A bicyclist in the lead gives the signal—
The slightest imperceptible nod of his head,
And we all surge in unison across the pedestrian walkway.
Taxis barrel into the intersection, determined to turn left or right.
Passenger vehicles the size of tanks cut the light, honk at the bicyclists.
I pedal my bike across and watch with apprehension
Until the mobile family safely reaches the other side.
Hiking the Great Wall in Spring
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We ascend the Great Wall
As pear trees burst into bloom—
A vista of pure white blossoms
Across curvaceous mountains.
And when we descend
Into an efflorescent thicket,
We are stunned into silence.
The handsome young guide
Turns towards a pretty girl
And says softly: Lihua.
A shy smile spreads across her face.
And those of us who overheard
Smile quietly too,
Because we know that Lihua,
The pear blossom,
In Chinese poetry
Symbolizes a young woman’s beauty—
Beauty that inspires love—
Transitory,
Like the pear blossoms—
A love, fragile, blossoming
Between these two.
This is the Moment:
Spring in Beijing
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This is the moment
Blossoms come down
And white dander floats on air—
Like faeries, each one
Carrying its own blessing.
This is the moment
When the pink
That has adorned this city
Of cold gray stone
Plummets to the ground.
This is the moment
The city bursts into green
Before the scorching heat
Of a dusty summer.
This is the moment
Life gives us all
A chance—
To be reborn,
To sprout anew,
To carry within
The memory,
Of the abundance,
Of pink blossoms,
And white,
Pure and sacred,
Adorning the boughs—
A gift, bliss,
A fleeting moment
To carry us through.
How Do You Mourn A Tree?
Beijing, China
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How do you mourn a tree?
With coffee and cigarettes?
Or with your heart and soul.
How do you part
With the one tree
That was your only sustenance
As you gazed out your window
Overcome with homesickness
In a foreign land?
And how do you comfort those
To whom the tree brought shade in their old age?
The elderly men and women
Who would gather beneath its branches
To play mah jong, to drink tea from thermoses,
To reminisce and share Chinese wisdom?
The wisdom that the young have stopped up their ears to,
As the nation makes its postmodern leap forwards.
And who devised such a plan?
To slaughter their own backyard tree
That got in the way of cars and SUVs
As they battle for parking spaces?
And how will we all live
In a world barren of trees?
Without their gentle caresses
And the ever-changing light
That emerges from beneath their canopies—
Their quiet conversation
Just when you need to hear those words most,
Or the subtle movement of their leaves in the wind
Like the flickering eyes and hand gestures
Of a Chinese opera singer?
Who will mourn this tree with me?
Who will eulogize this tree?
Who will embrace its thick knotted trunk,
As it ultimately crashes down onto the hard asphalt?
Who will witness this slaughter with me?
And who will feel each cut of the chainsaw
As it burrows deeper and deeper
Into the tree's flesh,
Revealing its naked rings,
Rings as old as the centuries that are China,
Rings that hold within them
The stories and whispers
Of all who have sought solace in its shade.
The Gift of Birds
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Every morning I see
The same flock of birds
Through my Beijing window.
Flying in concentric circles
Carried loftily upon air currents
Only they feel
And I cannot see.
Merrily they swoop and circle
Among the five story flats
In figure-eights
Like ice-skaters,
Etching their designs in the sky.
Is this their morning exercise?
Or an expression of their joy
Of simply being?
The life of birds is so brief—
And yet this does not concern them.
They never touch down on the dirtied streets.
They rejoice in the moment
They are able to fly,
To greet the morning sun,
And on a good day—blue skies.
Oh, the life of birds—
Brief, mid-flight,
Ever in motion,
Embracing the luxury
Of a single moment
That will soon pass,
And may never come again.
The grace of their wings
Carrying them effortlessly
With the direction of the wind.
And so, we all must take a lesson
From the birds of Beijing—
And go—
With this city.
At the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival
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Amongst gigantic snow icons of civilization,
A Chinese man dressed as a bright orange fox
Reluctantly trudges towards the ice arena.
Under his arm he carries
A large round fox mask
The size of a basketball.
Pop music erupts painfully loud
From strategically placed speakers.
Strobe lights flash across the ice.
He joins other orange fox men on a stage of ice
And begins gyrating his hips, pumping his paws,
Now to the left, now to the right.
I wonder how much they pay him
To dance like that?
Everything is fun, fun, fun.
The flashing lights are incongruent
With the eerie peace of a winter landscape,
And the gently fading northern light.
Behind him is a Taj Mahal sculpted from snow,
To the left a fairy tale castle, and to the right a cathedral,
Across a cheerful snow pig—this year's zodiac.
In this land of snow and ice, the gateway to Siberia,
Where the bones of hundreds of thousands
Of my people lie,
In the city where the White Russians fled,
Seeking shelter from the Bolsheviks,
We are all compelled to have fun now.
And I think
There is something sacred
About frozen rivers,
Slow northern twilights,
Black arctic nights
With temperatures that kill.
It is something we want to block out
With colorful neon lights and
Chinese pop music shrill voices screaming:
Bu-bu-bu-ka-chi!
When the song is finished,
The troupe of orange foxes,
Trudge off the ice arena.
They tear off their masks,
Revealing black hair
Heavy with sweat.
I Was Born of a Tree
E. Jonušas, Testament
Nida, Lithuania
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It was a tree that birthed me—
A strong oak tree
With myriad branches
Reaching outwards
Towards the blue sky.
Only that sky was tumultuous,
And the blue only an illusion.
Red clouds rolled in,
Closing in on me
And my Tree Mother.
I was born screaming
With my mouth wide open.
My blue eyes set off
By white, white, pure white.
My eyebrows tinged green.
I was born with thick green hair,
Bangs cut straight across my forehead.
A freak, a monster.
My rib cage poked through
Because I was, after all,
A child of starvation.
I was born knees spread wide
And with the soles of my feet
Facing outwards.
I was born of a blue womb
While my Tree Mother burned red,
Purple at her outermost edges.
As violet as that red is
At that place where
Inner and Outer worlds meet,
A soft white light protects us,
Encasing us.
That white melds with green
To form a phosphorescent glow
That emerges from her roots,
Flows around her womb,
Encircling it, and finally,
Reaches up into the sky.
I cried out in pain,
Emerging into this world
That humanity has imagined for us.
I burst into this world engulfed in fire,
With cold blue rain beating me back.
Is this how the world is?
Red molten hot
In opposition to cool blue?
And where does the orange come from?
That fragile orange light
That illuminates
My most vulnerable branches
For all to see?
Could it be hope?
And all those thin, green, gnarly branches
At my tree's outermost tips?
They are my forest home.
Small, twisted, tormented trees,
Their growth battered and stunted
By the ever-constant wind.
Those red-orange waters pooling
At my mother's feet—
My mother's feet,
My mother's claws,
Her roots—
Roots that reach deep
Into our water womb
That birthed us all.
Oh, I see now, those roots
Are her hands, hands that grip
Into the earth, holding on for dear life.
Holding firmly, but just barely.
Nature is always placid,
Even in the midst of the roughest storm.
Nature never changes,
Even among constant change.
It is human evil
That plays out
Against the backdrop
Of kindest nature.
Shall I remain in my blue womb?
Locked within the trunk
Of my Tree Mother?
Never enter your world?
You may hear me cry out
As you stroll past in the forest.
Trees and humans—
We are one.
We are the embodiment
Of each other.
We Need No Symphony Here
JuodkrantÄ—, Lithuania
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We need no symphony here,
For the wind is ever present.
The wind plays
Various tempos, pitches—
All we must do is listen.
Softer, now louder,
Drowning out the chatter of birds—
And what is that ever-present rushing sound?
That is the sea, and not a man-made highway.
Here only the sea is in a hurry.
When you stop, and listen
It is all so loud—
How can your ears stand it?
All these sounds under the surface
Of consciousness.
Oh, this noisy world
Of wind and sea—
Forces that may never stop—
Not until the earth ceases spinning on its axis,
And we are all obliterated
Into the crashing of waves.
My Lover's Clothes
Vilnius, Lithuania
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I brought my lover's clothes to Caritas.
Before I could even get to the gate,
A man, reeking of stale cigarettes and vodka,
Stumbled forward to claim my bag.
“Ponia, I will take these,” he said,
Addressing me politely.
He relieved me of my bag,
Before I could even ring the bell,
And because I was afraid of him,
I did not protest.
And so, rather than my lover's
Fine cashmere sweaters,
And expensive soccer jerseys,
And smart button-up shirts
Going to the deserving destitute,
They were destined now
To be sold off,
Or traded,
For a fresh bottle of vodka,
A pack of cheap cigarettes,
Or in the best case scenario
A loaf of good rye bread.
Or maybe a pickle
To ease down the vodka.
The man returned to his pack,
And they descended upon him,
Reaching deep inside my plastic trash bag,
Pulling up item after item for inspection—
Like a flock of vultures
Descended
Upon the carcass of our love,
Devouring it,
Until there was nothing left,
Not a scrap,
Nothing at all.
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In recent years, my fate has brought me to live and work in countries and cities that are vastly different from the New York metro area where I grew up, completed my studies, married, and started a family. Intermittently over the past thirty-two years (since 1988), I have lived in Lithuania, the home of my father and my grandparents until World War II swept them across the Atlantic Ocean to America. Lithuania—for me is pure soul and the power of nature. I lived and taught in Hong Kong for two years, where I was the department head of the English Department of an international high school. And then, two years later, in cultural contrast with Hong Kong, I lived and taught for two years at an American cultural exchange program in Beijing, China. Thus, I was able to experience two Chinas—one Communist and one a Western democracy. I experienced the traditions, culture, climate, and people of both northern China and southern China. Living in Asia for four years enabled me to visit and absorb the cultures of parts of the world I’d never dreamed I’d be fortunate enough to see and experience—Bhutan, Bali, Tibet. An Indian businessman once said to me, “China is not a country. China is a civilization.” Perhaps the only way that I could make sense of daily life in China was through writing poetry. My poems are like diary entries. Through this elusive and concentrated form, I hoped to express a corner of what I experienced in Asia. When I return to the United States, I live in Maine, in New England. This part of the United States has its own unique culture, its own dynamic that speaks to me, again, through poetry.
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What The Willow Have Taught Me: Poems by Laima Vince
The Cosmic Tree: Poems by Laima Vince
Laima Vince began writing these poems as a MFA student at Columbia University School of the Arts. She continued writing poetry throughout her life, as she passed through many different phases of womanhood--marriage, motherhood, divorce, self-discovery, coming the terms. These poems consider what it means to be a woman in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. The poems also reflect a life of creativity and personal challenge.
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