An Attempt to Explain

by Irina Mashinski
     translated by B.Dralyuk and the author

At dawn someone sober hangs a sky
like a worn-out
wrinkled screen on the village’s far end,
the old projector rolls in from the East
on its heavy cart,

and I walk through the tall grass of Russian syllables,
where colons and commas are abundant
in June,

                                     and syntax is vague on ladybugs’ wings.

I would settle nowhere else,
wouldn’t settle for less,
trust me,
nothing would ever suffice, but

how do I explain
how I dread
the expression
on my motherland’s face?