By Victor Solodchuk

Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Anna Halberstadt

***

A bird flies home,
because it feels like a need
without feeling tired,
across the open sky.
And on earth hopes
get mixed with curses.
The bird flies over Kyiv,
it flies over Kherson.
A lark, a stork,
an oriole, a linnet.
A bird flying from afar
does not expect treachery.
And on the earth down there —
reactive volleys and threads of tracers.
The bird flies over Rivno,
flies over Cherkasy.
Where it is going to land
in that vortex — God knows.
Souls circulate in a vortex,
birds fly home.

March 1, 2022

By Iryna Evsa

Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Philip Nikolayev

***

He who couldn’t care much less
for affairs of war
has been killed and lies in peace
on the forest floor.
Birds, be silent for the dead,
don’t disturb his rest!
Three carnations have bled red
on the wretched chest.
He was for no cause at all,
nor for politics,
yet it’s here he had to fall,
clutching his right fist.
He was nothing to those who came,
quiet carpenter,
border man without a plan,
mushroom forager.
He dreams of the sunlit glade,
of wild strawberries
in grass by the forest trail,
voices among leaves,
three figures of men, the heat
of the final minute,
three convulsions, his closed fist
with a berry in it.

* * *

Do wake me up, I beg, but not here, please,
don’t block the light for me like awful news,
like the word “war” with its dark narratives.
These days I trust only flowers and bees.
I am not responsible for the world’s decay.
“Where are my children?” Rachel cries again.
Her ward’s behind the elevator in the left wing.

Who are these men in white — doctors or enemies?
Here are my children: sweet clover, chamomile, mint.

My right hand managed to wipe away the blood
from my face. They said: “You’ve one third left.”
Don’t you approach me, don’t you dare see me like this,
here, in the intricate tangle of cords and tubes! —
a pitiful stump insists and grimaces.

Wake me where morning air turns to lucent glass
in the windows slots between pinkish slabs.
Here I sit on the branch of an alder tree, dangling
and waving, waving all the limbs that I’m missing
at those who are no more or have gone missing,
as golden bumblebees embroider the noise, colliding.

* * *

He said, “I will be leaving this fragile boat.
My strength wanes day by day.
War has launched its bony hand down my throat,
draining my life away.
There’s nothing left inside,
no leaf or petal, no cliff or vacant land or . . .
“Look,” says he, “my mortal shell has grown light,
lighter than a fish’s swim bladder.

I no longer read books or turn on the TV.
I scurry for food and hide in my den,
a tormented neurotic lunatic in the highest degree.
Neither Freud nor Jung can ease my pain.
Scrape us off, dear Lord, with your palette knife,
mix us with damp earth and darkness. Poems
have now become irrelevant to our life,
we stick to wakes and psalms.

I shiver as if suffering from fever,
the air on my tongue feels cold.
I’ve long been eating from plastic dishware,
metal’s too heavy to hold.
I can’t see the market, the Christmas house garlanded,

the sparkling blue window — as wholes.
Everything is demented and fragmented, fragmented
into pieces and holes.

He further said: “God, when it’s time for me to scatter
in judgment’s burst as a handful of sand,
revive me, not as a poet, but as a lighthouse keeper,
and please ensure he’s one who understands
plainly and certainly one thing: it’s never
darkness that works the light, but his own hand.”

* * *

— OK, You took away the sea and the tiny land parcel,
some 550 square meters
of moonlit feathergrass, the drizzly garden
with the whole hot bundle of summer,
the guests’ noisy chatter full of good news and
the fugitive ant.
But why did You have to kill the children, why?
I hear the reply: “Not I.”

— OK, You, instead of a prison cell, berating me three times,
handed me a traveler’s bag.
You plunged into darkness some of my friends’ minds
and never brought them back.
My buddy once taught me: God’s a fair guy,
He ain’t one to lie.
But why did You have to kill the children, why?
I hear the reply: “Not I.”

— OK, so You saved me. Just so I wouldn’t turn back,
You shattered all the windows in the house,
muttered “this is no time for sleep” and spat
me out at the border crossing with a reserve of rusks.
You said, “A donated coat will keep you warm and good
at Luisenplatz, where you’ll survive by eating food.
But why did You have to kill the children, why?
I hear the response: “Not I.”

So here I come floating, a speck in Your motley ranks,
into the night, where nothing’s more precious than
a roof overhead — called dakh in Ukrainian,
and the same in German.
A green church spire rises over the city wall.
Flame–colored flowers fall.
— Is that really you, Lord, am I hearing your call?
But there’s no reply at all.

Night Visitor

Crazy Vic endures alone the disaster of war.
Addressing a gathering of folks
by the kiosk — two girls and Zhora and Maks —
he mutters, “Now I am my own master,
like what’s his name, Nasreddin.
It’s been half a year my mom’s been gone.”
They do not respond.

The kiosk worker gives Vic free gum
and candy for his meekness.
He is happy: not bitter! yum–yum!
Timidly, he touches women’s sleeves,
calls them all “eccentrics,”
always adds, “Forgive me if I’m wrong.”
They do not respond.

Vic cooks up an elementary soup in a
pan (his mom’s recipe) from the available things.
. . . two spuds, some onions, carrots, followed by semolina.
Doesn’t remember his father. Maybe an officer, he thinks,
as he licks crumbs from his lips.
A sham soup, a sham life, a sham death.
His house was struck three times, and but he’s in good health.

At night Vic visits all 45 apartments — secretly.
In this one they were always drinking tea.
And here Petrovich lived, stole boots from the factory.
And here the kid who brought home some TNT.

Counting the spines of steps with his feet,
he plods stubbornly up in the dead of night.
Anyone got a light?

And then Vic finds the doorway where
a cloud hangs like charred cotton in the window hole.
Swallowing his tears, he shouts, “Hello!
One, this is Nine! Do you copy? Over!
Zhora, Maks, aren’t we always together?
Where are you, friends? What is going on?”
The dark stairwell does not respond.

By Boris Khersonsky

#1

That kind of time — you read prayers and frontline
reports — where did our troops retreat, where did they advance.
How many were carried away by Death? Oh, this is not the first
time we see the beastly Russia’s true face.

One day she pretends to be Lenin, the next, a dry–armed Koba,*
Now she hides under a mask of an underground dwarf.
But she remains the same, toothy, and narrow–browed.
She yearns for victories and cannot stay home.

And what a home, with steel bars on all windows.
With screaming guards. With a jailer’s all–seeing eye.
And the Heavenly Doctor looks on — everyone is slightly ill,
nothing can help, bad heredity can’t be cured.

In that ugly mix — genes of masters and serfs —
Is that Pushkin with a white feather? Or Vysotsky with his guitar?
No Cheburashka here for you and no Crocodile Ghena.
Only lies and violence — always together — walk hand in hand.

And all she wants is control, she wants to drag you into her lair,
To besmirch black dates of the calendar with the innocents’
blood,
To accrue deadly sins for her obituary and her epilogue,
And to settle the score with Ukraine at last.

How to pray now? Light a church candle.
Open your Psalter at a random page.
Their jaws will be broken. Their guns will misfire.
And the response will roll to their border like a crashing tide.

……………..

* Koba — Stalin’s nickname.

#2

Spring began with death. The snow had melted. In a huge
puddle,
the cathedral, turned into a club, was reflected upside down.}
People wept. They feared it would get worse.
The whole unhappy country mourned a paranoid and murderous
man.

The architect of the great victory. The begetter of great plans.
The digger of canals. The planter of forest belts.
The people were good at seeing off their tyrants with tears.
What did they have more of — tears or fears? Good question.

They welcomed the new era, with their belts tightened.}
They amnestied convicts and sent them off for raspberries from
the camps.
They sighed with relief. They wept. They feared it would get
worse.
Especially for the doctors. Especially for the Jews.

Factories closed. Instead of the usual smoke,
Sirens of mourning issued from chimneys’ red brick.
Death is inevitable. A tyrant’s death is essential.
The upside–down reflection of the cathedral that was now a club

Translated from the Russian by Nina Kossman

February 12, 2022

It’s feels weird — but these could be our last days of peace.
Friends are abandoning us. We are staying alone
to face, or rather, to see the enemy’s mouth, his snout.
Will he really step into this trap?
Does he really want to stuff his mouth with our soil?
Is his best friend a subterranean mole, not a wolf ?
Is the earth that hungry for blood?
The vampire is insatiable and gentle like a calf,
only it doesn’t suck milk, he prefers to suck blood from veins,
so that he gets asked later — in what regiment he had served
so that his chest is all covered with orders, post–mortem.
The body decayed; the soul remained all alone.
What is there for it to do on the battlefield ? But, there is no way
to heaven.
It is so scary to be thinking — these could be the last days of peace.

Translated from the Russian by Anna Halberstadt

By Alexandr Kabanov

Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Philip Nikolayev

***

In the morning, through my shut eyelashes,
birds awaken in melodic splashes
incrementally: do–re–mi–fa–sol —
which’s it going to be, sugar or salt?

As I listen, contemplate and grin,
I awake, whatever state I’m in,
through a wartime sock replete with holes,
like sand fleeing from an hourglass.

To become accustomed to our times,
I associate the birds with names:
Cutie–coo, Frit–fruit, Chug–cheery–wink
(while the dove forever begs to drink).

I fail and get rained on by the skies —
rain is smart, knows how to summarize,
to make tracks without uttering words,
to dilute the clamor of air raids.

As, come dawn, the wails of sirens wane,
silence rises from its knees again,
Chug–chug–cheery–wink falls silent too,
he and Fruity–frit miss Cutie–coo.

* * *

What is lacking are details, commission more detail
where, in winter’s predictable mess,
darkness worships the cat as some junior idol,
keeps him cozy and warm in its breath.

Lucid details galore, where the crankshaft of weather
daily crunches fresh snow over ice,
where the devil, in his sly interlinear manner,
has pervaded our innocent nights.

Time chugs heavily on in a merciless fashion,
filled with news like an infinite scream,
but what’s lacking are details of mercy, compassion:
may we painlessly pass in a dream . . .

To write verse means to be a disburser of pain —
dip the soldering iron in solder:
let it smell of slow lead, of hot tin and of rosin —
even literature smells like a soldier.

Let the funeral medals, ever jangling, keep score
over snow levitating with force:
we were lacking the details of the start of the war,
but those details emerged in due course.

* * *

Clasping firmly in three fingers the round slider of the moon,
when I glide it even slightly, all your dreams are shifting soon,
first I give you vintage sounds, moldy blue like Dorblu cheese,
then I reestablish silence until dawn, your default peace.

Bucha and Hostomel summer, phonemes ripen on the words,
so that people may remember us who now lie in the earth,
bodies lost and still not found, here a foot and there a hand —
children of Grisha and Nadya, nameless, unidentified.

Meanwhile vegetable patches stage their rituals all around,
as the moles and the mole crickets sing us carols in the ground,
they croon that there’s enough wet soil to furnish all our
beddings,
that we will grow up big quite soon and heal before our weddings.

Time crouched in the rounded corner of the old ancestral home,
fresh blood gushing like a fountain pools under a random stone
like a black LP of vinyl, a single of heaven and earth:
we tried scrubbing it with alcohol, but we couldn’t hear a word.

War is mounting, war is trending, even death joins the reserves,
we’ll discover at our weddings it was you who murdered us —
you, dear cousins, who invited us to meet with you at sunrise
and then embraced us so tightly that you gently snapped our
spines.

Know, all you who killed the party, trampled down our festive
treats,
we are now children of vengeance, you can’t hide in your retreats,
no more peace for you, we’ll find you, you will never be OK —
whether in Nice or in Vinnytsia, we’ll embrace you back one day.

* * *

In the ravine, on the hill, I slept in a huge home,
half empty and half full, stoking the fireplace with
volumes of literature swimming in Cuban rum
and heard the purr of the waves and listened to the waves.

But this was interrupted, now by the monotony
of crickets in the shrubs, now by my own remorse.
How fortunate indeed that dad died suddenly,
lucky he didn’t live to see this bloody war.

Or else he would have howled like an old dog in Kherson
from pain, under bombardment, without meds,
trapped under occupation, dying of cancer —
but God admitted him to one of His best realms.

Or else he would have seen the occupier scum
kill, rape and devastate with psychopathic mirth,
but the Lord lifted him like a boy in His arms,
lifted him like His son, and saved him from the worst.

It’s April now, and we have all been scarred by war,
but I recalled today with tender clarity —
about my dad and me — in the maternity ward —
how he wept over me, how he weeps over me.

* * *

An individual with a long shelf life,
I trusted that I would survive the worst
in an era of grief without relief
save for such solace as is found in words.

Yet, staring at the double war’s split face
I found myself inexorably lost,
unaided by the high self–confidence
of Russian culture turning to exhaust.

Whatever features may describe your nation —
brothels in Brussels or monastic piety
you can’t escape the justice of damnation —
the good, the bad — in your accursed variety.

All in one bottle — genius, mediocrity —
you all invaded us with swords atilt
and now you share the same responsibility,
the burden of the same collective guilt.

Bones and meat of the living and the dead are piled,
in a dark ditch at night, all Russia’s fake,
Russia’s no more, her shelf life has expired,
Russia is rot, both asleep and awake.

Thick maggots copulate below her surface,
angels of feces orbit her above,
only her trusty Belarusian comrades
signal their deep approval, joy, and love.

The ditch is boundless, endlessly oblivious,
centuries float in it in dirty sacks,
with only the unequal sign between us
and fortunetelling on spilled blood and guts.

Yet, visible already in the crosshairs,
an age of retribution now begins —
and all are guilty, but there’s no forgiveness
for me all alone for our collective sins.