Tuesday 7 October 2008

ALEKSANDRS ČAKS(1901 – 1950)



Čaks was the first Latvian writer, whose works expressed the city theme, compared to the former Latvian literature, which mostly described the country or small villages.
His first poetry collection was edited in 1925, dedicated to Riga and its life. His poetry was full of imagesand themas formerly not depicted in Latvian poetry – the night lifein the city, the homeless, the prostitutes, the poverty and even the drain-pipe.
In Čak’s works, he demonstrates his deep love to Riga, justas it is, which especially is demonstrated in the title – poem of the collection “A heart on the Pavement”
Has written also romantic poems, dedicating them to the Latvian warriors of World War I.
Ice-cream

Ice- cream!!!
How many times I have gone by tram
Without a ticket
Only to buy you!

Ice-cream,
Your waffle
Blossom for money
On every corner of a ciry,
Your waffles
Wonderfully yellow,
As in shops of tearoze boulevards,
Your waffles,
Pink as blod,
As lips of ladies and auto nightroom.

Ice-cream
The rarest stamps
With multi-coloured tigers as a show-windows,
With long giraffes as a radio towers
I have sold for you.

Ice- cream
Your coolness seductive
I have felt sharplier
Then girl’s lips and fear,
You,
A calendar of my agedness,
Loving you
I was learning to love
All my life and longing.
***
Waterspout

Waterspout
You are the first musical instrumenti f my youth,
Five-floor long,
Grey macaron,
Under your mouth
Ice is growing as a glittering beard-
The only one ice-cream for boys
which was for free.
You-
winter house for flies and centipedes,
the longest tunnel for rain.

Why for you are streching
So fragile and delicate
Along houses upwards,
As well as my sadness?

Why are you so thick
As my indoor plants
And virgins on modern postcards?

It seems that this is destiny for all those
Who strive upwards
From street’s noise
From life’s stoutness cheap.

***

City boy

Listen, ex-swineherds, I am coming to help you!
Me- a city boy,
Adhered to street smell and rudeness,
Hating everything, that is calm and slow.

As I was in my yourth
Crazy, with spit in my mouth as a beast:
I had nobody who could enter me in slowliness
As you did- meadows, cows and lambs.

That is why you like to play your pipes
And to sleep and to dream under willows.
But I like to whistle and to raise the dust on a boulevard
And to push life further as a two-wheeled carriage.

What a scrab of waiting as a servant round the corner,
When a possibility coms!-
Eh, let’s drink, for that I am a shameless person ,
Dear es swineherds...you.

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