A new issue of my translation projects (highly irregular currently, which I beg your forgiveness for).
It is another “compilation-style” one, with new poems from authors who were previously translated, and a couple of those who weren’t. All the authors are currently serving in the Ukrainian Army.
Oleh Kadanov
choose your words carefully
as if walking
through a booby-trapped forest
touch the white-hot time
and look
how the skin gradually becomes transparent
how the fingers slowly vanish
every evening
oil your protective mechanisms
every morning
keep trying to glue together the shards of reality
that awfully resembles a dumb dream
now choose
ask the mariupol audience
or
phone a friend who fell last june
choose your words carefully
and lay them out
in stunning fragile structures
unspeakably beautiful
lying and disgusting
for you to smash
when the silence finally
stops being golden
when the silence finally
becomes pure evil
from the book “before zero and after”Dmytro (Dima) Kazakov
For Zhenya I am eyeing two birds that Kateryna (politely and somewhat more tenderly than rats deserve) calls pheasants and the moment I am scooping out pebbles of bird shit from my balcony and raking dried leaves laid out in the bed of wild grapes I am thinking of your grapevines, sweet, maybe, “Isabella”, on poles between the summer kitchen and the annex (what are those windowed annexes in southern houses — a porch? a terrace? remind me to ask you*) I remember that windowpanes were blown out by a wave of a rocket that struck the Bashtanka center, and how you, from the experience, told me that putting tape across the windows really works — all the crossed ones are intact. I hadn’t been at yours a long time, even before the invasion, I didn’t see the taped-over panes. but I can imagine their thick, like black wine, rhythm, that crawls through the annex with a measured rocking of a henhouse, that stands wall to wall with the house and the annex, and smells of bird feed and food for a hundred cats who walked by this windowed porch and their measured steps don’t disrupt the clacking of text (I wrote this and heard how the glass cracks; how you are grunting as you put in chipboard: temporary — and eventually permanent replacement) which emerges, following the sun above that very text with a barely shimmering variable. ______________ *asked, he says “verandah”. (original)
Ihor Mitrov
1. will there be an Easter service I ask in the shop while buying energy drinks for myself and the boys the saleswoman doesn’t know nobody knows for a long time nobody has seen god here at least once at least at Easter trying our best to lure him with white crosses on armored cars with camo-colored pocket bibles and still he isn’t seen even when the mine shard went through all four gospels went through all the acts of the apostles and got stuck in the first to the corinthians as if hinting at something we still understood fuck all and saw the same 2. god like a lot of locals never went back after the deoccupation to the battered Lyman city now we live in empty houses without asking the owners the owners fled somebody to the west and somebody to the east and good riddance maybe they won’t be back and god idk I wonder who now lives in his home 3. there are two churches here one was destroyed by Grad the other one closed shut moscow patriarchate priest fled to Svatove when ours entered it was told to me by local women on “Ukraine” bikes like my late grandpa had heavy and uncomfortable but of domestic production I asked these women will there be an Easter service they didn’t know they didn’t know whether Christ will rise in the battered Lyman city stuffed with green jeeps KAMAZes, ZILs, GAZes transporters, APCs IFVs, tanks and uniformed Pregabalin-infused ants 4. I’ll stuff reeds into my pea jacket and my wind- and water-proof pants and into my mud-covered boots said to be uncomfortable but of domestic production I’ll stand like an idol in the meteor crater in the dried-up lake I’ll scare crows and roes there are plenty, you know, crows and roes, I’ll wait every Easter night I wait for something don’t know what every night the alert howls every night a strike every night a house vanishes together with people 5. will there be an Easter service I ask a round guy by the ruined railway platform in the battered Lyman city which was called Red Lyman before and just Lyman before that he looked at me shook his head unlikely how do I end the text if it is about something that isn’t there how to end the text if it is about nothing (original)
Valery Puzik
JARMUSCH (from the book “Human burrow”) Jim my friend do a “Dead man” remake right here somewhere near Komyshuvakha on the way to the positions ”Tallinn” or “Girders” who else but you will cut our lives into a Cannes-worthy movie? and it is like we are alive gulping energy drinks eating oranges laughing because they promised to bring tangerines to the shop and it is like we are alive waiting for Christmas or St. Nicholas Day depending on how lucky you are Jim my friend the powers that be write the scripts for us look in your mailbox there are many texts if you’ll choose a story about me cast Adam Driver as the lead definitely let him write clumsy poems let his voice sound like in that movie about the bus driver and this poem is a bus and the movie is poetry about a path and it never ends because from the beginning to a new beginning there are just ninety minutes and all the ninety minutes we clean our guns sitting on the logs we chopped before the opening credits (original)
Eva Tur
we are one-day heroes there is enough of us for the morning news for evening candles for a minute of silence and a touch of somebody’s tears and then the next day comes it always comes. how else can it be? it comes with other names other call signs and photos new victories and new losses the time moves forward it gathers us like the wind rakes up dry leaves just yesterday they said our names with their voices trembling today they just remember tomorrow they will struggle to remember we are one-day heroes just like those who stood before us. just like those who’ll come after the earth knows this eternal order. it accepts everybody with honor and embraces the earth has seen plenty of goodbyes last bows and kisses. plenty of people who were sure their pain would change the course of time but time flows through open fields. through vibrant cities and empty villages. through our graves we are one-day heroes that’s why we are enough to fill the gap from the morning news to the evening candle we are one-day heroes and the day always passes (original)
Yelyzaveta Zharikova
An antiwar novel and in some hundred or fifty years somebody will write an antiwar novel a powerful brilliant work with nontrivial emphases it will be instantly acknowledged by critics it will win plenty of international prizes it will be at the top of the bestsellers list of our free and forever young country a novel about people who were alive alive and fully fledged alive and whole with all their flaws and weaknesses against the fearsome background of a distant already too distant war about people who shied away from war who tried, first and foremost, to save themselves themselves and their clumsy loves themselves and their fragile inner skies with pink shreds of tender evenings about people who just wanted to live and of all the rights that blossomed in dazzling white and red flashes on the horizon chose the right to remain themselves when the history demanded to be someone else what about the enemies? of course, there will be our enemies the author will look for the semblance of humanity in them will look and find it that’s the peculiar specific of an antiwar novel there will be our mothers and wives sisters and husbands children grandpas grandmas almost as crystalline-sad as they were in reality dogs cats chinchillas parrots there will be mice rats and worms of course how can we omit them will we be there? of course my brother we’ll be there supporting characters somewhat flat with somewhat monotonous biographies lived — fought — fell or survived does it matter to those whose skies cracked inside them we’ll be there my brother somewhat boring somewhat too large for the few paragraphs we’ll be allowed to occupy we’ll be there like empty Christmas ornaments that are put away into a big dark drawer in spring till the next appropriate occasion while inside them, in the darkness, silently shimmers the eternal gray February snow but for now we are asleep my brother in the imagination of an unborn yet writer my character is asleep in a fetal position and yours in the position of a snow angel and we dream of the blackest of all nights sometime even if not about us they’ll write a brilliant antiwar novel with nontrivial emphases it will be in fashion to look for new emphases in that distant bizarre war and you know what, my brother this will mean only one thing that we really won that the last word a very simple trivial word almost a faux pas for an antiwar novel the last word my brother which nobody would even say aloud was ours the last word my brother I am telling you we will have it (original)
Vasyl (Vasek) Dukhnovskii
|on sweet cherries and memory| I observed my bandaged hand and listened to the soft wheezing of a dog in the cramped basement by spirne village near the place that once was the city of siversk dozens of soldiers sat after a very unfortunate assault it was so cramped in there so many people that most of them had to sit and stand on the stairs and several of the heavily wounded were lying outside of all the years, that autumn I was closest to a trip to a farm a walk on the rainbow a premature acquaintance with apostle Peter you get it that was the only thought and also there was a dog a big shaggy boy with kind eyes and a shard of tank projectile in his stomach he was dying silently on the stairs a couple of meters from me it was somewhat funny that several wounded were waiting in the open but the dog, for some reason, earned the right to die on the stairs everyone understood that his was the wheezing of agony would be funny to fall while assaulting the “pecker” position I thought ”pecker” has a proud sound to it when the animal finally fell silent we all sighed with relief two carried the body out and one was able to sit on the stairs and when the darkness became unbearable and an armored vehicle carried us to the rear the flashes of Grad lit up the sky (but only for a moment like a camera flash) we lived through one of the most significant days of our lives I thought that I’d name after that dog some beautiful street on the outskirts of siversk so children gathered sweet cherries there and remembered the poor shaggy thing but there is no siversk anymore and also I have no idea what the damn dog’s name was (original)
Good Stuff