by Anna Glazova
translated by Alex Niemi

lightening never leaves
once it’s called on the hollow of a tree.
empty space crumbles within,
and lichen begins to grow without water,
dry and strange in the black walls.

those who settle there are precisely those you
cannot see.

and mysteries are fulfilled:
birth of light from nothing
and birth from frost.
the death of a deep body that holds a furry
moon.

by Anna Glazova
translated by Alex Niemi

in a bee’s mind exists
one
taut goal—

and only honey seeps from it,
and sweet nectars don’t know,
and no one,

only that stripes
(even the sound draws a line in space)
divide, like a metronome,
every May and in almost every meadow.

by Irina Mashinski

The end of the world
for Ray Bradbury

Time. It belongs to us,
not more than, say, the moon,

Time, oblivious to whatever
a wife hears in the evening
from her misanthrope on the couch with a newspaper.

She listens patiently to the appalling details
of the latest news,
and she sneaks out to bury them in the recycling bin

with an iron weight on top

Nobody sees her but the moon.

So, it’s tomorrow—the last day of the world, at least
until the evening when it is once again
second to last.
state
the hidden and the obvious
the concealed and the overt

shout to be heard
bending your head lower and lower toward your heart

speak as if you have a grasp of time
and of the mystery of numbers and letters

speak through a spent throat and cracked lips
losing what is left
of your mind and your will

dying

speak out as if the time has come to speak
your time
the time of joy
your time of joy

enunciate
what cannot be uttered

speak
blessed by the spark of speech
in the beginning of the end
at the center of the world
in the darkness of darkness

speak
as if you want to give things their true names

everything you might say
could ever say
just say it

by Irina Mashinski
     translated by B.Dralyuk and the author

However much the forest cuts the heart,
the forest is our home.
I’ve come back to the barren right-of-way
for us to stay

With wolves, I will be numb and you don’t howl.
be woods, be numb, learn how
to know like wolves, to drink like birds,
weave nests no more.