In some earlier time
we agreed to be seen.
So we wouldn’t just be a breeze in the wind,
we dressed up in our bodies.
No bullets, scars, or wounds
can outweigh incorporeal being.
We came to feel the rain on our skin,
the coolness of churches and each other’s mouths.
To scent desire, or rotting
apples in an autumn orchard.
To be immersed in an icy source,
to chew a juicy mouthful, be buzzed on wine.
To allow a mosquito to fill up,
to lick the redness of a bite.
To help a blind man cross a river,
to help a lame man with his bags.
“Just look how strong my hands are!
I could dig out a tunnel
for us to hide in.”
“Just listen to how my heart beats!
I could dig out a tunnel
for us to survive.”
A tunnel deep under the earth,
connected to the sky.
And then, then I would shout
in a flash of wonder:
“Look, my love,
the world only begins there
where we thought it ends!”
Translation by Rimas Uzgiris of Indrė Valantinaitė’s “Tunelis”
Indre Valantinaite
Tunnel
About Indre Valantinaite
Indrė Valantinaitė (b. 1984, in Kaunas) is a Lithuanian poet. After graduating from a Jesuit gymnasium, she studied arts management at Vilnius University and at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. She published her poems in many periodicals, and printed her first book in 2006. Her first book, "Of Fish and Lilies" earned her the first prize in the poetry category of the 2006 First Book Contest of the Lithuanian Union of Writers. Her second book “Tales about Love and Other Animals” (2011) has won the Young Yotvingian Prize in 2012. The third book by Indrė is titled Trumpametražiai (The Featuarettes, 2017). Sheathed in a cover of velvet-like green the book’s title alludes to the meaning of the material, as cinema seats are often covered in a similar on. In 2020 the fourth selection of the poems "Clothed with the Sun" was published. In addition to writing poems, Indrė is a singer, a winner of several singing festivals and also she is a TV journalist and producer.