The Ones Who Don't Belong 3. Poem by Liāna Langa

You say to me - summer? Stop! Too much of glowing flesh, glassy
grey light on eyelids, the odour of decaying melons. Maybe
a movie, ditam, ditam? Dipetti, dipetti, perhaps to the Antarctic?
Don't be angry. Escape heals, but only for a space of time, just until
the blood blackens and medusa stratas layer the hourglass vessels.

Afterward, as you know, the sand returns in us,
so we may slave further.

Who shall say where we should head? The streets shall lead
further than our own seemingly sure steps. The grainy asphalt
rugs will weave into themselves the coat-of-arms
of cast-down glances, the tense light
of a walker's muscles, the Indian ink
shed by shadows. The city will wallow fevered, it will beg
its inhabitants to call a doctor.

In hair locks shed around a hairdresser's high heels, recently-bought
a baby carriage, glances, which meet suddenly and swell
like an edema - this is where time lives. Who will instruct us
where we should head?

On a sultry afternoon in a market from a butcher's counter
a snow-white elbow accidentally knocks down an hourglass.

Fine glass slivers slash summer's juicy veins.

Now you see how new rhymes are born -

a short-sighted uncle holds the world by a thread,
five-year old Wolfgang conducts a pollen ballet,
cranes feed their cranelings,
ore becomes ore.

Translated by: Margita Gailītis