Teodozia Zarivna
Two poems translated from the Ukrainian by Leora Thornton
Post-War Language
A one-legged man walks with crutches.
One footprint and many dots follow him
as in an endless continuation
of the present day.
And, in his footsteps, he drags his past,
black as night,
and from which he will not be saved
by antidepressants
or by rehabilitation centers,
or even by women.
Because now—there are no women,
they all disappeared
as if they loved his leg
but not him—a handsome man, a polyglot.
He is silent now.
He has buried all his languages
where he buried his friends.
What are those languages to him?
None of them can describe
even one battle
that lasts even one night.
That lasts . . .
A Bird Above the Road Home
Behind a planet of dust or an eternal realm of swamp,
there the Empyreans lie tied up with a thick wire.
Days and dates have faded, blurred by pluperfect
as if acetone and alcohol mixed for an effect.
A bird is kneading with wings the acres of viscous sky;
her golden eye pupil will reflect everything randomly.
She will compile greenery and water, slip over stones and shiny roofs,
and cry over the wheat fields, leaving a shadow on a highway.
What does she see from up there? What does she report to the expanses of air
through her hoarse and torn sound, narrow and sick throat?
Some people in Nirvana? a smoldering campfire?
a hungry grimace of a fox? the shadow of a motionless body?
rags fluttering somewhere? a voice calling for punishment?
the eyes of a betrayer, framed in glasses?
The wind patches up the sky with the wine-colored clouds.
Plastic, which slowly turns into the smoke of the motherland,
spreads above canola blossoms as if it is a never-ending whip
with which a new landlord plays with peasants.
The bird will roll out the sun; it will be welcomed as a guest.
Changing the light in the frame, she is changing the whole picture:
she focuses on the outline, on the live and perishable flesh,
and on that which might lightly swing in the ghastly light of X-rays
or night vision optics—everything that frightens and breathes,
and might not love her but will never abandon her.
She will look over her lands, a landlord of the hundredth generation:
the gardens are boiling, foaming in yellowish blossoms.
The wind is bringing speech—Romani, Turkish, Yiddish?—
and tears, heavy as oil tar. If you do not cry them out—you will not travel.
Teodozia Zarivna is a Ukrainian poet and novelist. She lives in Kyiv, and is the editor of the magazine, Kyiv.
Leora Thornton is a writer and filmmaker. She lives in Vancouver, Canada.