By Lyudmyla Khersonska

***

where, she asks, are my irises

where, she asks, are my irises,
yeah, the purple ones, but especially
the yellow ones. have you seen them?
they were tall, with their little tongues sticking out,
their leaves were sharp and strong,
they were so tall, so peaceful.
maybe you’ve seen them?

oh yes, we saw them,
of course, we saw them.
we denazified your irises,
they were preparing an attack,
planning to join the eu and nato,
stockpiling biological bees

that’s not true. they never traveled
]outside the borders of the garden bed.
they are flowers. why the hell
do you lie all the time? you trampled them.
to you, nothing will ever be pretty.
why do you lie all the time? why?

Translated from the Russian by Olga Livshin and Andrew Janco

War. Day 3

“I don’t know how to live now.
where, in what direction. for example,
you and I don’t have a bomb shelter, not even a basement.
nothing of the kind. so what do we do
with these air raid sirens? with the sirens of dismay inside?”
“make some tea, we will drink tea. it’s just as likely
you would get hit by a falling brick
as by a missile.”

“want any sugar?”

Translated from the Russian by Olga Livshin and Andrew Janco

War. Day 9

Let’s fortify our windows
so that they don’t explode
into tiny parts and shards.
The bottom of the sea is almost here,
crawling up from below.
Just like back when,
a generation ago, the ground churned,
decimating their happiness.
Wouldn’t it be silly
to choke like that, right now?
Things still feel normal.
It’s spring out there,
yet a cloud of sulfur gas is rising.
Like someone shaking up
a black sea, and a hazardous muck
surges to the surface.
Just like a human’s true nature
seeping out.

Translated from the Russian by Olga Livshin and Andrew Janco

* * *

The country lies like a puddle on a military map,
any country gets attacked in March,
June, July, August, September, October,
while it rains outside and maps are strewn in courtyards.
Stop, who’s here, a general on cotton legs,
he is followed by a man without a world, and the world is fucked,
the world gets a checkmate and Russian “mat”, three stories high,
“mat” is forbidden, so the world continues on the brink of war
between the caves.
A suitcase — purgatory — hell, a railroad station in front of him.
Who said, there will be no war? No one.

A small grey man has cancelled
the twenty first century,
he turned the hands of the century clock
to the wintertime of war.

2014

Translated from the Russian by Anna Halberstadt

* * *

I am a bird
with feathers in my head, my wings are covered with dust.
I am asking you to get out of my way, I’ll try to start
the flight from the ground.
I was flying in my heels, at the same height
as the birds, that were out for a walk.
I fell, broke my ankle. My lipstick
is smeared, my wings are torn.
Because there’s no reason to blow anything up
Many bandaged birds lost their hearing
from the bombs. And now they only can
whisper in a low voice to whales.
My nationality is called rooks
I used to walk in the black soil, that was alive
looking for worms, and now they write to me: “Beware, mines!”
Arable land, halfway walked through,
is covered with lumps from the blast waves.
I am a bird

Translated from the Russian by Anna Halberstadt

By Yehiel Fishzon

Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Anna Halberstadt

***

1.

Your city does not let go of me
memory does not allow
to take my hands
off your hips. Hungry desire,
where kisses do not cure,
like drafts in narrow gateways,
in passages next to the bridges
with weird names, where today
one comes across a barricade–like
wall of duffle bags.
With your city I have gone
through all things sinful,
except for bombardments:
borrowed to eat, made love on straw.}
tore poems, like one tears a shirt,}
went down into the underwater
and prickly world without you.
Into the wide band of deserts
and coming out of it, begged
that you should be the first to call.
Call and would not let me go away
like the summer storm not calming down
In the city park. That’s how
a song wants to fall back into
the notes, backwards.

2.

While my heartbeat still isn’t lost
among the jumble of similar sounds
in an ant hill, I would like to come
and visit your house on Pasteur street,
kiss your hands, every finger,
every fold of your soft palms,
and your mouth, a textbook of questions,
not answers.
So, that your place starts smelling
like mint and apricot jam at once.
Your voice at night penetrates gaps
in neighbors’ walls in the solid brick building,
in my bed, on my shoulder
with a verb addressing me — you,
telling me, facing East,
of the Southwestern school of sunrise,
where into the bottle with a home–made alcoholic juice
some add a bit of Indian summer
Khadzybey wine spilled from a bottle,
missing the palms of bazaars, trips to the beaches
and chaos of fun.
First ray of Sun secretly makes its way
to move a strand of hair on your temple
after that, the superintendent
— to water In the courtyard
tectonic plates
on which the continent Odessa stands.
I should go,
But birds–bandits sing behind the window
local yellow press representatives.
I will stay
and will be your fire in the stove burner
as you brew your tea, a candy paper wrapper,
or a long transparent piece of melon skin
on a dry piece of torn newspaper.
I am lying. I left, avoiding the rubber hose
wrapped into the Turkish Boing,
I ran away
from real secret love with no rank
and plain décor.

* * *

A little child asleep
he sees the darkness
as a blur of colors
awakening, he shrieks
not recognizing
who’s bending over him
the older you get,
the denser are your dreams
flying, spilled food
exams, the English woman’s neck
an explosion on sticky sheets.
Your soul grows
It acquires habits from
the body, so that you
could wake up
in a suburban train
after the scrape was diagnosed.
He is a husband, father, whose
sleep resembles the one–hundredth
day of the flood
where the horizon resembles
a continuous sheath
to the predator’s glance.
Disaster creeps up on its own
— adulthood naturally happens
to be penury and prison.}
An elderly man’s dream
Is filled with mental games . . .
Death. In the last layer
of oblivion,
when eyelids weigh a ton —
all characters would appear
from the dark
to embrace him one last time.

June 25, 1941 Kaunas

My falcon, flying from the Litovskaya line
will notice how deftly knives
have danced here — a purple tin of Jewish blood
pouring into the green gold of rye.
Thick bushes of violet shadow
and the blue tinge of a corpse on one previously alive
already taking the shapes of plants
so as to linger in them
until the thunderstorm trumpets.
Leafing through the crimson laughter of all the others staring at
gray orphans and
cripples,
you will ask, my falcon, whose handwriting this is: and I will
answer: the XX century, the
Silver Age
fly, looking down at the pearlescent roofs
high fashion, cast fleece of culture,
and remember — with it is with the innocent crimson blood of
Jewish babies
that space and time are dotted here

By Andrei Kostinski

Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Tatiana Bonch–Osmolovskaya

***

completely clean
as if a hundred janitors
have cleaned the school yard
so that my granite yard
of science started to shine
so where are you my achievements
either diplomas, or grams
I could celebrate until dawn
because how could a morning be without me
because how could the sun be without
my one hundred blue eyes
in them there are two skies — before and since the night
and my surprise on a ray entwined in the forehead
to which I put ice and fire
so as not to think: whether this is truth or falsehood
whether this is love or hate or third
whether it is death or happy life
to remember to forget not to know
to let go confession for a cause in a field
so that the wind, quiet from sorrow
listened to the taste of wormwood on the lips
and left the world by the porch
so that was enough for someone for some reason
and put itself invisibly into a bag,
then carried it off quickly into the steppes and the woods,
and lost itself not ever finding . . .

* * *

are you afraid of the darkness?
manifest
the beloved voice
sonorous on the radio
and the tone of the face
where I (chose) took all the colours
of your sleepy heart
look at me
you look into darkness and ice,
I do not reflect you
because love is for you
on the earth
I took it
into the merciless darkness
where only in the middle
of self
the fingers feel
the name of the little fire
to not go mad
henceforth:
because I respond
to my call to you

Door

you enter the house that you
cannot enter you cannot exit
you cannot stay there
the door is cut out it withstood even
the blast wave it saved the neighbors
who were sleeping behind the common
hallway. the neighbors we lived with in
full harmony, together holyday after holyday.
the head of the family who served in the Soviet
military forces in Afghanistan, his wife and daughter,
and Alina, in six months she would start studying
in year one. they just got up
and flew into underground nowadays serving
as bomb shelter. the entrance was closed got opened.
in the morning in underground you saw
tears large like peas in the man’s eyes
like years ago when a helicopter with his friend
was shot down and caught fire. ‘if not for your door.
there was an explosion in your apartment. the door
shook but held in place. it saved us . . . ’

you made this door twenty years ago. you did it
thoroughly. now it lies like a bridge
in the hallway. you wished to lift it.
whatever. you couldn’t. whereas they
managed to turn the house into a door
holding blast wave and fire that engulfed
all the rooms in an instant. ‘i couldn’t
touch the walls. they were so hot.’
there was a bedside table in the common
hallway, your kids used to put their schoolbags there
returning from school. you placed the pug
on it and put a coat on him during winter
so he would not freeze. the door into daylight
opened first at 6 am and many more times afterwards
until it was cut out at one in the morning
by those who came from the north
from everlasting darkness so they had no need
for the door so they did not dare to know
that behind the door there could be light

Black Triangle

A year ago, I managed to get
into my ruined apartment
ten days after the Russian bombardment.
The burnt body of Nyusha the cat,
sheets of paper from the books
of my burnt library, sweeping around by the wind —
only frames left from the whole windows,
ash up to the shins, settled on the floor,
bare walls covered with a thick layer of soot.
The hum of the biting wind consisted of
unstoppable shhhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuu sound
going through my ears with endlessly stretching thread.
The smell of burning and some chemicals clogged my nose —
perhaps there were some fumes when they extinguished the fire.
Burnt kids’ sneakers lay on the floor,
there was a hole in the floor in the middle of the room made by
the shell,
a monitor stood next to the hole,
curtained with a black cloth of soot,
a crooked refrigerator frame in the kitchen,
pigeons sat silently on the windowsill of my daughter’s room . . .
A heavy steel door lay on the floor of the hallway,
it was cut out by the firefighters.
Everything was like black and white movie of the early twentieth
century.
Screws and nails remained sticking out of the walls,
reminiscent of the paintings and photos that hung on them.
A small picture once hung on one of the nails —
a sailboat at sea — when he was 5–6 years old
my son chose it at an art market
(there is a permanent art exhibition and sale of fine arts in the
city center).
Under the nail, a soot silhouette
black
triangle
like a sail . . .

By Stansilav Belsky

Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Tatiana Retivov

***

a

“fall ye gads a day without missiles”

matrix platonism:

dismantling of the soul
down to the last blade of grass

b

the sound of the siren like a hot river
boils throughout the five–storied buildings
“air raid alert” — a spinning familiar}
broken record

i stay put on the bench with books and glasses

“whatcha doing?” — “writing poems”
better to answer directly

(kyiv again being bombed frantically
too early to return there)

c

a digital moon should have fallen
but the sun fell instead

inside the pneumatics it is warm
as under a blanket

(what will happen in the winter)

d

return me

the answer is undirectedly dark
as the snapping of fingernail against a stone

“maybe should give you a ball?”