by Nina Kossman

* * *

Fortunate one,
born two days ago,
you have twelve more days to live,
a whole eternity,
depending on how you think about it,
but you don’t think
this way or that,
all you do is flap-flap
your pretty wings,
newborn butterfly,
you circle my lilac tree,
it, too, has only one month to bloom;
you don’t worry about mortality
nor stay in your room
to guard yourself from the flu,
you’re happy
to be alive this moment,
because this moment is life,
and that’s all that matters.
Fortunate one,
born two days ago,
you have no memories
of being a helpless cocoon;
why can’t we be like you,
beautiful butterfly,
why can’t we flap our wings
and be thoughtless
like you.

by Nina Kossman

Apart from
everything that can be marred,
apart from the world,
and apart from peace
(both of which are mir in Russian),

apart from beauty
in the eyes of the curious,
together with stars
in the psyche’s sky;

here stands a statue
to the one who could fly
better than eagles,
birds of thought
(he said so himself more than once);

here he stands,
freer than all the mortals,
with invisible wings,
beholden to nothing,
except to the words he composed
for himself alone
and for butterflies which circle around his head.

by Nina Kossman

* * *

Ash-berries and acid leaves,
burnt acorns and poisoned fruit,
neither poor nor rich
will partake of these berries;
the ill will not become healthy,
while the healthy will become ill.

I have seen the poisoned.
I have seen the ill.
They were not saved by old symbols,
they were not saved by stripped symbols:
the poor stayed hungry,
they would eat almost anything,
even burnt acorns
and poisoned berries and fruit.

Who had the secret thought: nothing will cure us
but the cure itself?
Who had the secret knowledge: stripping of symbols
will not heal the wound?
Who had remembered the words:  silence will not cure us,
but the anger will do us in?
Who said that symbols belong to history,
which is neither black nor white
but the color of faded pages?
All it can do is teach us
how not to repeat it
again
and
again
and
again.

by Igor Bulatovsky
translated by Polina Barskova and Ainsley Morse

* * *

the nice thing to do
the nice thing to do in a Soviet picture-book:
look out the window to the yard —
out there boys are playing soccer
All these Sashkas Kolkas and Mishkas,
out there their sentence is being read

Out there good old artist Konashevich
walks the preschool kids to Eden
Illustrating queens and princes,
She-tanks, he-planes, all the rest
Marching joyfully in ranks.

There beneath the Children’s Press clouds
A young man is growing up
All along the narrow cornice
The dusky pigeon makes his way
All these Chuks and Geks and Liams

This yard doesn’t have the space
For Russian letters Jewish letters
Voiceless letters, letters from Moskva
typecast letters dying behind bar, letters from Lethe