In the morning, through my shut eyelashes

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.