Author Bio
PrintUpdate 2003
by Jonas Mekas
Photo by Nadia Chaudhury.Winter, don’t ever be over. So that Spring
never has to show up, and no armies can
come marching in on us, while they’re still waiting for Spring. Wild
forest creatures will stay calm asleep, dreaming of
utopia.
Winter, don’t ever be over. All will stay shut in
at home, sleeping all the while, with the vile evildoers, tramps
and wheeler dealers all frozen stiff, all will be drinking
with prostitutes, like children in their innocence
until the Spring,
      which is never to come.
Don’t show up, Spring. Keep all your
blossoms, smells, kisses and crusts—
I want to stay calmly drinking my wine
with old friends—while it’s still winter,
while the armies haven’t marched in yet—
O snow, keep on snowing, as deep, impenetrable,
cold, as in the winter of 1812,
until it’s Spring,
      that’s never to come.
Translated, from Lithuanian, by Vyt Bakaitis
About the Author
Poet and filmmaker Jonas Mekas is the godfather of American avant-garde filmmaking, or the New American Cinema, as he dubbed it in the late 1950s. The founder of Anthology Film Archives, the Filmmakers’ Cooperative and Film Culture magazine, Mekas helped shape the public image of avant-garde filmmaking in America, as well as profoundly influenced its self-identity. Born in Lithuania in 1922, Mekas spent the Second World War in displaced persons camps before emigrating to the United States in 1949. He is the subject of To Free the Cinema, a selection of appraisals edited by David James (Princeton University Press, 1990). In his native Lithuania, Mekas is regarded one of its leading poets for the six separate volumes he has produced since 1947. There is No Ithaca, a selection from his early work translated by Vyt Bakaitis, with a preface by Czeslaw Milosz, has appeared in English (Black Thistle Press, New York, 1996). His most recent book is Artist’s Book (Onestar Press, 2004).
