How could I reach back that far,
how could I become one with the old
churchyard in Rongu, daydreaming here
in these Bitterroot woods, blue enamel mug
as in childhood; the buzzing of flies
in afternoons when I dozed off from heat
and exhaustion, sank into dreamless sleep
like a stone sinks, making rings on the pond.
What pond darkness, what growing rings
around the mute stones
of the churchyard in Rongu!
All of them sank under those stones:
first grandfather Vidrik, then
grandmother Caroline both — unknown,
vague family legends to me;
next to uncle Villem aunt Marie
and Endel, their only child.
They hurt, these Montana mountains,
through which a country road
dustily winds its way, as it once did
from Palupera to Rongu.
Looking at my years, I should be calm, wise,
perhaps even rooted in this Bitterroot range,
like those upright tamaracks around me,
which whisper tales of a new life,
a new world, yet my thoughts remain
anchored in the earth of the churchyard
in Rongu, with which some day
I shall merge, throwing off from my shoulders
the rings of years.
Ivar Ivask (1927 - 1992) Estonia
Translated by Ivar and Astrid Ivask
Source: Lituanus, Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, Volume 32, No. 1 - Spring 1986
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