Untitled #13 Poem by Janina Degutyte

I don't want to be writing poems.
Don't believe there's joy in that. It is false.
I would like to be kneading bread, or rocking a baby,
And carry my summer in crease-lined palms
All through the haymowing season.

And yet winds rock the streetlamps this evening,
And I walk the plowed fields in bare feet.
Life is palpable, like a scar,
And my star-filled nights, breaking into words,
Yield a bitter dew.

And it's in words the morning comes flowing,
With the pigeons loudly traipsing my ledge,
And a chill wind in autumn, where the shoreline roars;
With a smell of mint off the river, and a sunbeam
Perching on your shoulder like a bird
That flew right in through the windowpane.

And nothing will fit the words:
Neither black midnight's repressed cry,
Nor the red and violet asters picked at midday.
Everything you shove away into words will settle in the veins,
Both the dizzying spell and bitter aftertaste.

If I carry the small handful of snow
I dipped from a drift like a branch of cherry blossoms,
Don't think that it's easy to manage.
I don't want to be writing poems,
But the pencil in my hand vibrates to my heartbeat,
And there is no way back.