Guest Editor Philip Nikolayev
Philip Nikolayev: is a poet living in Boston. He translates poetry from several languages, with a current focus on Ukraine. His works are published internationally, including such periodicals as Poetry, The Paris Review, Harvard Review, and Grand Street. His several collections of verse include Monkey Time (Wave Books; winner of the 2001 Verse Prize) and Letters from Aldenderry (Salt). He is coeditor–in–chief of Fulcrum: An Anthology of Poetry and Aestheticsand the translator of The Star of Dazzling Ecstasy, a volume of poetry by Alexander Pushkin (Tiptop Street, 2021).
Guest Editor Anna Halberstadt
Anna Halberstadt: is a poet and translator from Russian, Lithuanian, and English. Her English poetry has been widely published in journals such as Caliban, Cimarron Review, and Literary Imagination. Her work has been translated into Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Tamil, and Bengali. She has published six poetry collections, including Vilnius Diary and Green in a Landscape with Ashes, and several in Russian. She has translated a range of notable poetry into Russian, including poetry by Eileen Myles and Edward Hirsch. She guest–edited two volumes of Russian poetry in English translation for The Café Review. She has received numerous accolades, including the International Merit Award by Atlanta Review (2016) and various poetry prizes from Russian literary journals and the Lithuanian Translators Association.
Kakhovka Dam Burst: June Landscape
By Igor Bozhko
Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Philip Nikolayev
***
in the moonlight roofs are floating
a barcarolle sounds
floating flowers floating coffins
floating drifting cows
wavering the mirrored crescent
a dog and a cat
paddle but no one is rescued
by the moonlit path
rising waters overwhelm
overflow all things
and as dark as life itself
a barcarolle rings
July 17, 2023
Butterfly
war rages in the fields
kills everything that breathes
it tears off living limbs
stares with a beastly gaze
ruins everything in its way
it crucifies the yellow field
it pierces skin and ribs
it devours all
it devours all
but one soul persists alive
vital indestructible
unsubdued by death it thrives
a marvelous black angel
among the raging metal
it refuses to settle
but instead of dying
keeps flying and flying
* * *
the air is motionless
not one leaf stirs
on the old linden tree
recently
an insane wind shook the houses and the sea
chopping off anything unwanted
slamming doors
now it is quiet
with a gentle ringing in the ears
sparrows mutter
an occasional chirp
and then again there’s no sound
or explosion
such that windows shatter
and hearts shudder
July 7, 2023
* * *
russian planes dropped a barrage
of bombs on the village
they killed old folks and children
puppies kittens and chickens
after another violent clap
the fish are floating belly u
white bellies all over the pond
likewise killed dead by a bomb
the maidan exists no more
nor the council the church the store
where the candies bread and wine
flew out the window to the sky
that’s why the angels in the sky
are eating candies and drinking wine
as they weep
and weep
and weep
for the innocently slain
no candy for them
* * *
when a burst of bloody bullets rocks the town
the cuckoos inside their clocks just hunker down
little dogs run to basements flee from peril
while a bottle stands unopened on the table
all the bullets avoid it with precision
they pursue other targets with ambition
now that everything is shattered in the cottag
shaggy shadows crawl the walls and on the low porch
but the bullets skirt the bottle gingerly
for the master bade it wait until victory
for he ordered it to stand firm and endure
homebrew sentry until the end of war
[February] 23
By Dasha Suzdalova
Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Philip Nikolayev
***
[February] 23
Snow hasn’t yet covered
the train window
its glass still uncrossed
by tape
everything’s
suddenly grown so old
the eye of time is slimy swollen
the living still sleep the sleep of the living
and of the land
— whether or not dawn is already breaking —
the hard mouth not yet unstitched
the living dream the dreams of the living
and we aren’t yet knocking in morse code
on our childhood’s arid cities calling
new mutes
* * *
If only
anyone at all heard, saw
how they jangle, how they glitter on you,
these bones:
the world in which you dare
dance like this is a
success
* * *
Object on Deoccupied Territory
There was everything there:
taste, color, scent, texture
the laws of physics acted upon it as expected
gravity held it unfailingly to the earth
atmospheric pressure squeezed it (without excess)
a passing cloud
calmly cast its shadow across it
yes, it had sufficient characteristics
(at least for a newspaper piece)
except that there was no name
due to insufficient time (or perhaps desire)
it was simply called:
that which defies naming
* * *
Out of the corner of the eye
to record the crime scene, where the freshly
dismembered aspires to reunification;
but aspiration is just another slaughtered word,
only the outlines of material evidence quaver, as if in an act of
creation,
of breath lifted from constriction —
and if even they cannot endure,
how could we
* * *
Just think how little of her
is still left for the soul to hold on to
and already she’s gazing at
cosmic catastrophe
as those stretch past
stellar innards spitting out
a long ending saluting her
not in the least surprised
by her tenacity