By Olga Bragina

Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Philip Nikolayev

***

no I wouldn’t care to discuss the message of war war doesn’t teach
anything or make anyone
better more efficient or more stress–resistant in a world of peace
you simply walk the streets of foreign cities
not understanding what you’re doing it’s truly wonderful here
so quiet and the pastries are incredibly tasty there are no
explosions except for
fireworks they welcome you warmly here and ask how you are and
no one here knows
what war is just as we didn’t before either
we saw war in movies but then we got fed up with the movies and
wanted to watch
something about the present
something about the world of real things not shadows in a cave
something about a world where missiles didn’t fall out of the blue
on people like in a bad
blockbuster thriller something about the actual world such that
we could recognize it and
could speak with it in its own language not in the language of war

* * *

It’s as if all this happened elsewhere in a parallel reality
as if pain had in fact spared the mapped location of our city
the words of an unknown language form wild asymmetries
may they not zero in on any subconscious conspiracies
it’s as if all of this did take place but the rest were futile
the body returning the soul gains the license to kill
here’s a glass tray for petals of bright transparent tongues
the city flowing with history’s blood is both hell and ground
of oblivion I remember you amid these paradigms
where it’s too dark for photos and too dark for paradise
the blatant death of carbuncles and the murder of Christmas
everything that we have must now be split in halves
between us as we are and us as we ought to be
you will have no more atonement for all eternity
the walls of the house collapse while I remain
who were we who didn’t even have a name

* * *

when they kill for the yellow–blue bracelet it seems that we are
out of words
one can extend the thesis adding that poetry is impossible after a
burnt hand with a little
yellow–blue bracelet I remember they used to sell them in subway
passages those
home–woven souvenirs
if there’s something to die for
what’s most impossible is that in Europe they tell me: “We’re
nomads we don’t know
what a homeland is and altogether what the word means”
if there’s something to die for what will remain of this little
plastic bracelet
everything will burn and fade everything that kills will burn
consume itself while life lives
on
what’s a piece of plastic in two colors
what is plastic what are ashes what is land land that’s yours and
land that isn’t yours
it’s the same land the differences are tiny no matter how far east
you go it proves to be
the same
the land is dark and the homeland salty
who can tell why plastic doesn’t catch fire doesn’t burn away why
a person dies or kills
each of these points may be answered but there are no answers
yellow–blue color

* * *

your message is forwarded to the answering machine
no don’t cry in vain no one dies under God
all those bodies killed in this war in this flood are filled with light
and stones
with sparks of electric current there should be no sorrow here
only lifeat half past three the machines grind removing each
other’s
garbage to not recognize
life and to die
a list of unknown persons here bread for the pigeons dries up on
the palm here only a
few days remain
to change the trajectory of where things are moving
write petitions with your left hand about what to preserve and
protect as if the world
were in the business of giving shelter
as if the heads of those who love you won’t grow gray as if we
were not abandoned like
infants in a winter field
to come out into the light following bird traces as children were
advised in books all this
is not in vain
believing what is advised in books that when fear or hope
envelops you the solution is
at hand
a shepherd leads the flock to the slaughter to a life–affirming tune
on the radio
bird tracks disappear under the crossfire downpour
blood floods the sky until you have stanched it

* * *

hey mother cuckoo the heart’s explosion a trap of words as they
imagined you blood the nightingale abyss will never leave you
as if there were nothing the sky is burning where once there were
underground shopping areas where we went daily for prayer
choosing from among what cannot be chosen like discord and
love we at first chose for ourselves what we didn’t need at all
then we screamed mentally under the open sky it’s just a need to
feel that someone needs you where the sky was crimson like blood
the country will arise again against the horror of life against the
arbitrariness of history the garbage that pollutes sadness burns
under the roof while we are poisoned by fear as in the folk song
the shoulder bag rolled off the big hump you cannot escape it will
stay with you forever this transparent earth incompatible with
hope in fact you’re simply not there it sings you lullabies so you
may fall asleep on the sand or draw or play it recruits soldiers any subjects of experiments it’s just that we are not used to losing but
that’s temporary

one day you’ll fail to guess a term like “pass the move” who wants
to give away freedom or to die for it like wicket gates of old terza
rima like a song pouring from the speakers about how life used to
be better before look back then the sky was truly blue and pure
and red blood of corals gathered into a necklace it’s just that back
then life was such that we were a mere background to it painted
silhouettes fictions of the imagination disbelieved omens don’t
hold on to what isn’t yours whether to live on your knees or
perish in a struggle is not a matter of choice like a dawn outside
the window that slices off the top of the sky no one ever knows
what’s really behind it the glass dome breaks like beloved
porcelain no I’ll never become an astronaut where can you flee
from here and you know what it’s not like you are some kind of
ideal yourself and every person will receive a reward if not
freedom then a trap in which you feel its words are only for you
only yours so cherish them

By Maria Galina

Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Anna Halberstadt

***

1.
The sun moves toward sunset, above the sea the air is clean
a young attorney comes to see another lawyer,
they sit on the terrace, like in some novel scene
the wine is Amanti, their ties are Armani
while out where white foam dissolves in blue
water, Goryenna shines with incandescent beauty,
confounds the search for words that could describe it,
red at sunset, green in the light of stars.

Just five more minutes of melting lazy bliss
bad move, says lawyer to lawyer, to have settled here,
there’s a saying shared by all worn down by sorrow
peace will ne’er be found by them, even after death
here, since the beginning of all time / the souls of those once
put to death unjustly / gather here from all around
looking for attorneys / they come together here
demanding a retrial / or the rumor mill

In its deep blue valleys, rusty hillsides
wander shades of the innocent, ghosts of the murdered

The local Chianti isn’t bad, / aah, my friend, just stop

2.

Where the field beyond the fields / obscures another field
the sun is in a crimson pillar / a cloud of powdery snow / a dry
snowy storm
that was where they sort of lived / though never very well

3.

Look how these fatheaded towers / or really, towering
thunderheads
release, completely harmless, the final ray of light

4.

I do not love you, he said, but count me your devoted friend
the train leaves the gorgeous station, heading south
those leaden arches, in the insect manner,
purloined from nature by a tubercular engineer

Their roofs fade away in a long fluid arch
let us praise the T–square and firm pencil

Ladies’ hats and suitcases wander back and forth
how strange indeed that none of it’s forever
while she, tears veiled, walks on, her face gone pale,
embodying a classic image from interwar prose
What will you then dream of, while the storm blows
just look how lovely Nice is, look at Courchevel
look at these parvenus we’ve called forth from the dark
look, closer and closer, they’re almost like you and me
beneath Parisian roofs / almost like you and me.

The local Chianti isn’t bad / aah, my friend, just stop

While steam–powered life booms loud in honor of science
let us praise intelligent hands and precise sketches
the pumping station towers, the houses that are small
come, why are you crying again? / oh, I just don’t know

What will you then dream of, in the black and desolate steppe
it’s just heat lightning / go to sleep, my sweetie, sleep . . .

6.

It seems that I can hear them in the very simplest things
as if some bats were thrashing round and squeaking —
flying it whistles / a bat / on tiny shreds of dark
remember we
do you remember
you all remember
how happy we once were
how a chaffinch whistled to us, a passing grass–snake rustled
in the garden where there’s trees of apple, and also trees of pear

I do not love you, he said, but I’ll be a faithful husband
and she, gulping back tears, stands already ’neath the crown
embodying a classic image of old classic prose.

How frothful is the seafoam, how swollen is the surf,
how veiled is mount Goryenna in its shadows pale and blue

Lights are flashing here and there, the heat is made of pitch
don’t you worry, those there / are just spotlights

7.

The paper–thin borders of green blue lands
just look how lovely Nice is, look at Courchevel
how much gladsome flesh is being shipped in
by these snow–white airplanes and bright red trains
how silly are the fashions dictated by this spring!

They will go to take the waters / she’ll return alone

Ladies’ hats and suitcases, little white boats
how strange indeed that none of it’s forever
the call of distant paradise, a subtle itch beneath the skin
where are we being taken, I don’t know, just know we’re being led

As if bats came whistling across the waters’ expanse
quiet, my love, quiet, soon our turn will come
for us with our things, soon, and the wind will touch our cheeks
of course, we’re bourgeoisie, for heaven’s sake, who else?
Zagreb, Paris and Nice — all just mirages in the steppe

it’s just heat lightning / go to sleep, my sweetie, sleep . . .

The light at grandpa’s dacha flinched sharply and went out

As if by some mad chance, we could be saved
just listen to us, listen
just listen to us, listen
just listen to us, listen
just listen
listen
to us

Lights are flashing here and there, an august thunderstorm
don’t worry, it’s . . .
just close your eyes

8.

The sun makes its rounds above the world’s water
the gray–haired attorney answers his friend
you and I’ve been sitting here nearly till dark
but, no big deal, here, have a bit more wine
the local Chianti isn’t bad. Oh, my friend, just stop
who cares how high the mountains are in our personal hell
all these conversations don’t go anywhere

The Alps and Appalachians / no one will mourn for us

ore of a nuisance when you are, alas, an old man

Who knows who might be crying there, letting water out from
eyes

The light at grandpa’s dacha flinched sharply and went out

Alas, we all, unfailingly, wherever we may be
see mount Goryenna shining from every corner of the earth
it confounds the search for words that could describe it,
it is red at sunset, purple in the light of stars
and those who brought us here will have to answer for that too

But listen, it’s about to crack, / our chrysalis of common fate
each of us was killed. Each of us will resurrect.

* * *

Love, meet me in the green glen . . .

John Claire

Their train cars full of young hot bodies,
precious human raw materials,
the window panes day after day
reflect some other railroad station,

and still, come meet me in the green glen,
my love.
The hotter it gets at the borders
the stronger the home front
the more exquisite the bloom of the almond tree.

Their train cars are stuffed
with cold unbending bodies,
shoes with broken heels
deformed bursitic toe caps,
heaps of worthless castoffs,
like you and me.

And still, meet me in the green glen,
my love,
look, here’s a willow by the stream,
here are the moats, overgrown with grass,
here are mouths grown over with grass
here is your voice.

By Vasyl Makhno

Translated from the Ukrainian and Russian by Olena Jennings

the world turns to rubble
as if it never existed
the score for musical finale
and angels are at the table

they simply need to take up the trumpets
and others must break the seal
from the music of our sadness
and the sorrows of our times

elders sit at the alter
with the seven books with seals
glance at the seven lamps
at the trumpets beside them

in those agonizing symphonies
of destruction — St. John declares
signs and horses appear to you
snakes and bloody harvests

everything unread will be revealed
everything missed, and before that:
lambs with eyes masked
elders white as smoke

every war is like a revelation
like the music of reassurance
which we hopelessly await
to hear from a trumpet

About Spring

the first narcissuses broke from the soil
yellow like a flock of geese
they were covered in the blessed light
the first spring invasion

the spring is already at the ocean
at the dock, at the gray sand
the neighbor put a little support for the winter
beneath the walnut tree

the geese nest in the floodplains
seagulls, cardinals, blackbirds
a goose awakens from sleep
and knows where to take them

storks fly to Ukraine
to their own, to nests that have been warmed
and though it’s far for me
I notice them

I know they didn’t take pity
they have a natural instinct
to see the earth from a wing
and to always live with that

in this yearly spring
from this shooting and fire of war
the rivers and spring will rise
and the fish will rise along with them

Cavafy

Among old prints and wall inscriptions
our conversation turned to Cavafy
who we discovered in Alexandria
where Greek had survived in its colonies
decorated with pilasters and columns
on which saints and hedonism are close by

monasteries and churches with archimandrites
buildings with open verandas
to the sea — a myth — to the pleasures of love
of the body — of the physical closeness
poetry with strangers and not to those close
for milk with honey is not for everyone

held in his very century
when history has clearly visible examples
in the ministry of soil irrigation
or in the bordellos for men
the attraction of islands — like that of ships and ages —
to observing the war — defeat and rebellion

then I said: I found an edition
with an almond brown cover
I spoke about the film and filthy Alexandria
and the ports, both Islam and Christianity
we walked those streets like those attacking
so they could get bread at the grocery

I knew about the barbarians and the trip to Ithaca
about the apple pie with the taste of almonds
and about the only exit from the city
and from our chatting and from
our Akathists together with Our Fathers
on transparent paper — into white smoke

to what will this Konstantinos lead us
staring lustfully at the body
of a carrier at the port who everyday
loads something endlessly deep into the night
a poetic line floats like a ship to Ithaca
waiting for barbarians in the square

everything happens in this Alexandria
we are also present near the water and events
in the library’s quiet — and the lighthouses
built for sailors and poets
in coastal waters with traces of comets
and fisherman in boats and tin stars

and each poem of pulsing light
and our conversation is also a war and battle
and a departure and return of patience
listen to what Cavafy tells us
without similes and baroque metaphors
Ithaca is in the sea: the barbarians at its walls

The Morning Cooing of the Doves

the doves started cooing today — now
the river will twist like a serpent
bunches of dandelions will yellow
at dawn the doves’ song began
at night I didn’t dream:
the rain falling fitfully since yesterday

maybe so that I would hear,
how the three–corner roof, a hood of shingles
beat against the rain like a pair of wings
and maybe so that the world of doves
could teach me about the world of lilacs
and theirs and ours will crumble

they told me about the messy
destruction of blossoming — the steady
repetition of this in the cosmos and the fluffy
pussy willows with which the willow beats
when death and life simultaneously become
a city with mound on its back

I thought about the river which, from its surface,
will feed a pair of my doves
The Annunciation — the Passion
Week — then the rising of the body
from the light of the words from a billion stars
about those that our lord shepherd cast out

I thought that night blindness
was responsible for uprooting soil
that waiting for songs and permission
the spring rain would become our inheritance
its roots grown into the thick chornozem
its blossoming growth ruminated by goats

I thought about shepherd’s purses and dandelions
about “The Passion” which Bach will complete
starting with the passion of Matthew
pouring the music through the veins of plants
we will listen together with him
to the harmonizing of the tenor and flute

I thought about the doves, but Bach
proscribed the choir and how the flock’s
cooing coo–cooing cooing
spread with the blossoming sounds of growth
and that morning I heard the dove’s song
and a crooked step in the rainwater

I learned that the doves brought
seven grape seeds like those messengers
of the musical state of “The Passions,” the spring flood
and the renewal which awaits us
lady spring passes passes
doves circle flying above her as above a field

By Iya Kiva

Translated from Ukrainian by Philip Nikolayev

***

I’d like to tell you that the land here has not changed one bit,
but that would be untrue, the kind of cruel and futile lie
that they sprinkle to soothe a child’s eager curiosity

the trees here only pretend to be trees, the trees here fail,
lifting up their branches, as if yielding themselves prisoners
in surrender to their own tribe, to strangers and to this bitch of
an era
where matches are born straight from the buds

and the river of life burns so well, burning with shame,
that it has dried up, unable anymore to fill the summer
with bumblebee laughter and the winter with the honey of care

the land here has aged so much in one year
that where for centuries we saw the smooth pretty face of water
now the wrinkles are palm–deep}
and it sometimes gets even worse, yes, as if the sun now
were shining upside down, but who looks up these days anyway

the sky here is so quiet, throw a knife at it and it won’t flinch,
it’ll endure this too, silently swallowing dagger after dagger,
tearing its cheeks to blood, as they tear to shreds clothes
that no longer protect; evil eye, you know,

it gropes you from within, like lusty hands in a crowd,
calmly, shamelessly, with the feel of unhurried crime,
to the very heart; and the heart stops while you live on;
but quietly, without a heart; without hope; at luck’s mercy

and so, the land here, heartless now, like soil in a museum,
lies half alive and unconscious before everyone’s eyes,
you barely have time to take in a gulp of air and it’s already
poisoned —
scratching, growling, like an old dog that is dying
and all of this is so, you know, fanciful, that everyone has
learned
to pretend as that they can’t smell their own decomposition,
it stinks so badly now that you only recognize your own by their
stench —
those so proud, so subdued, so mercilessly beautiful

death, you know, always adds beauty; even to the point of
convulsive laughter;
isn’t it funny to walk the same path all your life
only to miss oneself at the very first intersection

how could this be real; isn’t this earth sick of going around
in circles in blindfolded eyeglasses, as in a game of hide and
seek;
hey, you, come on, guess where you’ll fall and not get up

so many good people here, you know, and they all lie in the
mire;
in heaps; arms spread; headless, as the case may be

this land is like a facial scar; everyone sees it,
but the courage is lacking to ask what has actually happened;
life is too short, you know, to gaze pointblank at a land,}
especially someone else’s; there’s a kind of adultery to it

as if love had suddenly become an artificial language
that we study and study it endlessly — only without meaning

i wanted to tell you that this land is poetry
and you know no worse than I how many readers poetry has

July 6, 2023

* * *

when death comes to an end
I’ll turn into someone else
someone easier to love
and whom there’ll be no reason to pity

and likewise no
reason to, vying for
victimhood, hate

we’re so fed up with these
grimaces of medusa the gorgon
that it is easier to turn to stone already
and feel like nothing

to become the voice of the steppe
the white dust of this land
to be incinerated on the bonfires of time

and then if a war
starts again in my lifetime
I’ll step out of the room
saying: yes, you’ve lost,
congratulations on your victory

because the heart’s no longer able
to pump the blood of ritual insults
will turn into a weeping peony

and then I’ll become a field

awkward
worn–out
mined

without people plants animals
or traces of life itself

and I will cross over myself
as children swim across the village river
back and forth, back and forth

just not to go crazy

July 18, 2023

* * *

speech drains away like water between the hands
the drought of time sketches a warlike landscape

we stand and walk stand and walk simultaneously
either under water or above water
swaying the sky’s seesaw on our shoulders

flags of hands flutter in the twilight of anger
like a feathergrass of birds fallen out of nests

the star of childhood — an unstoppable skiff —
prepares a bloody bed on the broken stalks of evil

the path to love — a needle’s alarmed song
with the tireless mill of death in place of lyrics

where — with each step — the sunken chime of the prayer bell
smashes its brow against the slow ruin of guilt
where — with each step — memory’s blast craters bloom like
reeds

trumpets of hate sift the soil through a merciless sieve of fire —
houses used to stand here instead of the night

the wind licks away the tears of orphaned trees
like a dog tied by a rope to the river

June 13, 2023

* * *

i remember as a child
they would take me to daycare
past the bomb shelter

as if the town possessed
a double plane of existence

the altered dress of life and the clock of ruin
with a sprawling dungeon of broken words

it looked as if
after the war
all the rats had left the township
while the ratholes remained

for the return
because a war always returns
like a thief who failed to steal enough

the gilding on another’s life
so tempting so inevitable

but in my building
(locals said the Germans
had intended it for themselves)
there was no bomb shelter

no one wanted to die
never wanted to die again
from the tongue tut–tutting

so when I met them close and personal
war and occupation
those two–bit sluts
shared by many soldiers

then I recalled all the bomb shelters in my town
like adult routes within a children’s railway

as if I weren’t there
as if I were no longer there anymore

May 8, 2023

* * *

once you’ve left your home, you can never stop on the road
never say again: put down your baggage, we have arrived,
because footsteps are the only cradle you carry on your back
without the right to fall, to pause, to circle back
to sing with trembling wrists echoing the tremors of dead trees

once you’ve left your home, never hide between fingers
from the bricks from which you build up the throat of sorrow
pressing its seal onto the paint and wax
of time, which crumbles like a nut with a black heart
embedding itself under the skin like the sun’s scratchy tongue

once you’ve left your home, words cannot be found for the love
of a place where you’ll relapse into the silent corridor of
childhood
where things eye you before a game that sinks through the ice of
bliss
that darkened long ago, like your grandmother’s ring on your
finger,
and grew as heavy as a family album in the memory cemetery

once you’ve left your home, you can’t gaze into the window
anymore
behind which the roses of a life in full bloom await you
because your garden has drifted away with you and water
can you hear, water is enveloping your body
filled with the thirst of a sea that, like freedom, is impossible to}
cross

March 31, 2023