GRIEF Poem: Apathy (the Weight of one’s Hand), by Lina Buividavičiūtė

Translated from Lithuanian by Irma Šlekytė. Thank you!

I’ve never seen it raising a revolver, ready for
a slap of betrayal. I`ve never witnessed it tossing soil
on a three-year old’s coffin, caressing an unloved one,
writing
the last letter, holding a hand of the one who’s departing:
So, they say,
I have no right to gather so much heaviness in my elbows
and
forearms. I have no right, they say, to not move my wrist
bones.

I know I have to move these arms for the sake of the
bedridden,
for those marked with age spots, for those who’ve lost
everything,
for those whose limbs were torn off by shrapnel.

Hanging off the edge of the bed, on a frayed bedsheet,
despite
all the scolding; persuading, ultimatums, 1 cannot stroke my
^
^
child’s head –
my hand grows heavy, because, I believe, as soon as I
touch him, the soil
will start pouring onto him.

I fight using different shapes of blackness, with no blood
flowing to the ten
little fingers,
but ifI’m called, if we once again need to stand hand in
hand, I promise you world
my hand,
for a short respite from an unworldly heaviness.