About the Legs

By: Lina Buividavičiūtė

Translated from Lithuanian to English by Irma Šlekytė.

I likely stepped into the world on the wrong foot.

I still don’t know which foot

is the right one, I still don’t know

if there is a right one –

what do I know what do I know what do I

know – one somehow becomes

a woman with a downturned

mouth, with a Shar Pei face,

a woman with the sparkle no longer effervescent

in her eyes, with faulty inner

thermometers, a lukewarm woman,

with loneliness dripping out of her bag –

one somehow becomes a sad-faced woman –

a she-spirit who’s left her tribe, a sister who sold

Josephs, with nuphars of sorrow entangled

in her hair, a woman who writes about the dark

ages, the blackest of nights, and little daughters not being born ---

So what do I know what do I know what do I know –

I do not know on which foot I’ll step out of this world.

---

Lina Buividavičiūtė is a poet, literary critic an scholar. This poem is translated from Lithuanian to English by Irma Šlekytė.