Rimas Uzgiris is a poet, translator, editor and critic. His work has appeared in Barrow Street, AGNI, Atlanta Review, Iowa Review, Quiddity, Hudson Review, Vilnius Review and other journals. He is translation editor and primary translator of How the Earth Carries Us: New Lithuanian Poets, and translator of Caravan Lullabies by Ilzė Butkutė, Crystal: Selected Poems by Judita Vaičiūnaitė (forthcoming from Pica Pica Press) and of Then What: Selected Poems by
Gintaras Grajauskas (Bloodaxe Books, 2018). He holds a PhD in
philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA in
creative writing from Rutgers-Newark University, and teaches translation
at Vilnius University. He has received a Fulbright Scholar Grant, a
National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship, and
the Poetry Spring 2016 Award for his translations of Lithuanian poetry
into other languages. Read more here and here. His translation of Gintaras Grajauskas' Then What was published by Bloodaxe Books the day before we read, quite magically. Look here for that book.
Robert Sheppard runs this blog and it features many of his projects, but he also has a website here.
The video of us reading the poem (above) may also be accessed here
as can all the videos of the Manchester evening, including the Twitters for a Lark launch.
Here is the poem:
Unreadable Expressions
1
Amid the hubbub, nothing
may be
Heard, so nothing is said.
The silence is itself an
answer.
Looking down from above,
unperturbed,
Giving a caressing smile
and
A thumbs-up, I mimed
A happiness that was not
all show,
Swifts weaving patterns in
the sky,
Standing by the pond with
its rustling
Rushes, moorhens in hiding,
Then ducks land hard like
rivets driven
To hold the fragile scenery
in place.
For this is life on the
hoof, without hooves,
Bolting for the open, but
bolted to the floor.
If only I could break the
metaphysical bank
But my body lies mortgaged
to the bone.
2
The shock I received
switching the radio on
With a sudsy washing up
thumb
Made me jump as if good
news had come
So I turned to the window
to peek at the sun
And the black and white cat
was stealthily
Treading along the narrow
wall,
Each paw placed precisely
To avoid the chinks,
prevent the fall.
You showed me your thermal
fingernails:
They go purple when cold,
red when hot,
The setting sun if we
swiftly set our sails,
An iris in the garden,
sticking to the plot.
3
Bored with each other,
bored with the game (we are playing with
Household objects, candles,
coins, spectacles, snuff-boxes).
Look at this statuette,
something from Greece,
Athena, I’m guessing,
It says on the base, a god
of small things indeed. The clouds hiccup in her sky.
Unreadable expressions on
their faces, unspeakable words at their lips,
The couple rests, unaware
of each other it seems, but we don’t believe that!
There must be something more,
murmurs down below. Dig through dust-devils
Under sofas and chairs:
small change, yellow petals, chop sticks, flies.
At last we come to rest,
off-loaded into the foyer where foreign dignitaries
Are unaware of disruption
to the well-oiled baton-wielding administration.
The foreigners bear us
trinkets, adoring our surprise. Batons, battened hatches, batons...
We’d like to say we’re
sorry, but our smiles are painted on.
*
Rimas Uzgiris and Robert Sheppard in their caps and with their real smiles.
Read about the Manchester 2018 Twitters for a Lark launch here, with video.
