I’d like to tell you…

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