The Ones Who Don't Belong 4. Poem by Liāna Langa

Come, life's winter! In a corner of a window ledge a titmouse
pecks at a bit of bacon
whiter than the city's snow. Lemon yellow sunbeam bagpipes
tangle in tree branches sounding funeral marches. Racing clouds
stick to the sky like cookie crumbs to a sick man's mouth.
The crunchy bugs of love's slag crawl over a letter that possibly
was written by God. Over the A4 format page courses ideal
handwriting, chains of words without memory. They slowly
are warmed by the letter's reader, a captive, his body warmth.
He, involved, follows letter by letter, understanding not a word,
just listening and listening to the soundless rattle of chains.

Come, life's winter! When the titmouse will flutter away
from homing glances and the cold will be such that words will freeze
into icicles and all the sweet,
demanding mouths shall grow larger for the word mamma, when
the letter will be blizzarded into infinite snow and we'll sleep
exploded and naked in the midst
of this landscape as part of the handwriting, as the letters
from which days and nights and the titmouse's bacon are woven,
then winter will come to save
the captive and one more time, awkwardly gurgling, will create food,
smoke from the crematorium chimney, applause, motors, tar,
tenderness, alcohol, dirty streets, a puppy, breath,
Christmas stamp colours, this year's first icy snow crust.

Translated by Margita Gailītis