***
cool
are your lips
how cool
are your
lips
only a spring rain rains like this
it rains and whispers
it rains on the naked air in parks
it rains on naked branches in parks
it rains on nakedness
it rains on naked lips in parks
it rains on naked benches in parks
it rains on nakedness
it rains on naked sidewalks in parks
it rains and whispers
cool
are your lips
how cool
like the lips of a boy
they open up and swallow a droplet
they open up and breathe a droplet on my lips
my lips as if sculpted
cool
are your lips
how cool
your lips swallow a droplet
your lips breathe a droplet on mine
my lips as if sculpted
cool
are your lips
how cool
they swallow a droplet
they breathe a droplet on my lips
as if sculpted
cool
are your lips
how cool
are your
lips
it whispers and rains
it rains on nakedness
only a spring rain rains like this
***
Rain.
Rain tattoo.
The words “don’t go” are spelled out on me in wet images.
I cast a spell on myself—“don’t go.”
Rain.
If I went, I’d go for good.
But you said—“don’t come.” And you said “don’t
kiss me when
I’m asleep.”
Rain like a scientist cuts me with scalpels.
Rain.
Working its way around my cheeks and forehead, and both
my knees.
Scalpels.
Rain.
Rain tattoos me unhurriedly, it marks my hips thoughtfully.
What now?
What more now? Rain swirls . . .
Rain writes all over my back.
To bring forth a pure species.
Rain.
And now everything has been said in watermarks: how
someone says “don’t go”
to herself.
Rain tattoo.
Rain.
They say we all once came from water.
As newly created, I now come from water.
Marked all over by watermarks,
indelible like watermarks
on banknotes.
I come out of the water.
And the whole world is so quiet and so
quiet, and so
quiet, and only
a ship on the sea
—Tooo! Tooo!—toots
sadly.
from Lips. You. Lips. Me.
Monta Kroma
translated from the Latvian by Karlis Verdins
It is a challenge to translate poetry into a language other than one’s own native language, so I am grateful to my partner in crime, editor Mara Kreslina, for her work. What makes many of Kroma’s poems special is their simple language and and the almost childishly naive attitude they express. However, although they may initially seem simple, Kroma’s poems are in fact quite complex. I hope these qualities of her poetry can be transferred to another language without losing too much, and that the English reader will enjoy her extraordinary poems.
Monta Kroma (1919–1994) was a Latvian modernist poet. In her youth, she participated in the Second World War, after which she became a follower of socialist realism and praised the Red Army and Soviet life in her poems. She graduated from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow in 1963. Influenced by modernist poetics, she went on to become one of the most radical experimental Latvian poets of the sixties. Lūpas. Tu. Lūpas. Es. (Lips. You. Lips. Me., 1970), arguably her best collection of poems, introduced her as a mature and distinctive modernist voice who celebrates the modern city as well as the body of her lover. A Russian translation of the collection was published in 1973. Seven more poetry collections followed. Kroma’s poems have also been published in English, Swedish, Estonian, Czech, Polish, Ukrainian, Moldavian, and Bulgarian translation.
Karlis Verdins is a Latvian poet, translator, and critic. He currently is a Ph.D. student in comparative literature at Washington University in St. Louis. He has published four collections of poems and two books for children in Latvian. A selection of his translated poems, Come to Me, was published by Arc Publications, UK, in 2015. He has translated into Latvian the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Joseph Brodsky, Charles Simic, and Lev Rubinstein, as well as Latvian poets who wrote in Russian.
