Poetry by Aleksandrs Čaks on Autumn

If one imagines the mood created by Čaks's poetry, for some reason an autumn evening on the streets of Riga immediately comes to mind. Wet cobblestones, puddles reflecting something yellow - the moon, lamplight or a maple leaf. Yet leafing through books of verse, autumn as such is rarely mentioned in any poem. Be that as it may, let us commemorate Čaks on his 110th birthday by rereading a few poems about autumn that have come to hand.

***

And here again is yet another autumn
And leaves in gardens start to yellow.
Like spring water soothing to the eyes
All things of old come back to mind.

O, transience, gently burdensome -
What a sweet and inescapable cross!
Come into my every thought, my every feeling
Like a pleasure not yet felt.

Let me see my life once more,
Which I have lived in happiness
With often bloodied shoulder,
As best I could - in this world.

Come, let me feel once more
What my breast has endured.
Even if it were heavier than death -
What was once experienced and gained.

One day I want to drink life's bitter cup
To the dregs like a mad drunkard,
So that I may know it was not in vain
That Čaks lived and suffered here.

Photo: StGrundy

***
I know already, know it very well:
All fades away with flowers and with sand,
And yet, and yet I still cannot recall
When the heart would have forgiven that.

It can never, ever forgive
That I shall not be young again,
My short, fitful life,
Which has never been too unkind.

Ah, how quickly the years pass,
It is not life, only a dream.
I look with happiness - fewer hairs remain,
The head - a field through which autumn runs.

But though something may have remained,
The clarity that autumn brings,
The heart, just as before, lives greedily,
Loving all things, it trembles and quivers.

Photo: The wax figure of the poet installed in September 2011 at Aleksandrs Čaks's summer home "Pelādes" in Vestiene Parish, Madona Municipality

***
Blue beyond the window, autumn evening.
Wind, having turned to glass, smoulders.
All that has any connection with the heart
Laps eternity like milk.

What does it matter that many have no home
On this blue night -
Your timid, light feet
Have already begun to warm by the fire.

What does it matter that you love another:
All in this life is but illusion.
Take this shawl, at whose centre
Is a pale yellow pelican.

Take it and with secret pleasure
Drape it over your shapely shoulders,
So that through the garment its fabric
May feel and see your body.

Sometimes it is better to yearn for lips
And never to kiss them,
Then over the heart the swings of longing
Fall only like wise birds.

Blue beyond the window, autumn evening.
Wind, having turned to glass, smoulders.
All that has any connection with the heart
Laps eternity like milk.

Photo: Pink Sherbet Photography