We are peeling away at life as at a birch
to look at its inscriptions
while cold May rain sinks down beneath the trees.
In the darkness between your lips, something
terrible as the imperative “Bloom!” is
forming itself. Everywhere
even in Lithuania, the rain is falling like this.
You and me, we are both from Vilna
and somewhere in our blood
prayers and cries gutter between dark buildings.
For now, the bloody sun
wanes at the lip of the cloud, a blemish,
all the trees are swollen into
bloom, and our hours,
stopped as the corked heart
of a beech, circle darkly out over the roofs