Amanda Aizpuriete

1956 / Jūrmala

That probably would be best - not to care

That probably would be best - not to care
about printshops, not to allow access to my words
to those solemn and symmetrical letters -
to leave it all in the curves of my handwriting,
jerky and uneven like life.
It would be best to take the pages covered with writing
and fold them into ships, birds and butterflies,
then throw them up in the air, into the wind
fire, water.
Later they will reverentially touch the earth
in the form of ashes or wet scraps of paper,
or tired butterflies. The earth
will sprout a flower with four crescent shaped petals -
my most beautiful, quatrain. Pollen
caught in the wind, will fly searching for a new soil,
and people will inhale the strangely fragrant air ...
And in a different life
a poem turned lover will embrace me, a poem
I will have long since forgotten.

Translation by Ieva Lešinska
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