Journey “V”

By: Lina Buividavičiūtė

They greet us with allamanda wreaths –

A ritual for tourists – the flowers drift in sacred

Rivers and lakes, but with a paid ticket

You earn the right to proclaim the local beliefs: how tall

The Durga statue stands, how many line up to take a picture with it.

We say we seek authenticity

And pluck the allamandas – no hotel in the world

Has everything included – because when swimming through mountains

And palms, carefully tracing the craters of extinct volcanoes,

Observing the rising and falling tides of the country’s economy

In the Sugar Museum (the guide had brough us there),

Buying tea laced with spices – but not very spicy,

Vanilla – that lost its scent, and we feel the melancholy of the tourist –

As if, in truth, we saw so little, as if summer in Mauritius

Unfolded with something vital still concealed

From our eyes. We keep counting the countries we visit –

But we have yet to learn how to travel – the deception of new lands,

Unfulfillments, the guilt of being the intruder, the nostalgia

For our homeland, as if it had been better to live an eternity

In the plains of our winter, it’s bitterness

So recognizable, so clear.

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Lina Buividavičiūtė is a poet and literary critic. She is an author of three poetry books in Lithuanian. The poetry book "Dark ages" will be published in Spain this year. Lina is a Pushcart prize nominee and two of her poems won Honorable mention at Writer's digest competitions. This poem is translated from Lithuanian by Agnieška Leščinska.