where, she asks, are my irises
By Lyudmyla Khersonska
***
where, she asks, are my irises
where, she asks, are my irises,
yeah, the purple ones, but especially
the yellow ones. have you seen them?
they were tall, with their little tongues sticking out,
their leaves were sharp and strong,
they were so tall, so peaceful.
maybe you’ve seen them?
oh yes, we saw them,
of course, we saw them.
we denazified your irises,
they were preparing an attack,
planning to join the eu and nato,
stockpiling biological bees
that’s not true. they never traveled
]outside the borders of the garden bed.
they are flowers. why the hell
do you lie all the time? you trampled them.
to you, nothing will ever be pretty.
why do you lie all the time? why?
Translated from the Russian by Olga Livshin and Andrew Janco
War. Day 3
“I don’t know how to live now.
where, in what direction. for example,
you and I don’t have a bomb shelter, not even a basement.
nothing of the kind. so what do we do
with these air raid sirens? with the sirens of dismay inside?”
“make some tea, we will drink tea. it’s just as likely
you would get hit by a falling brick
as by a missile.”
“want any sugar?”
Translated from the Russian by Olga Livshin and Andrew Janco
War. Day 9
Let’s fortify our windows
so that they don’t explode
into tiny parts and shards.
The bottom of the sea is almost here,
crawling up from below.
Just like back when,
a generation ago, the ground churned,
decimating their happiness.
Wouldn’t it be silly
to choke like that, right now?
Things still feel normal.
It’s spring out there,
yet a cloud of sulfur gas is rising.
Like someone shaking up
a black sea, and a hazardous muck
surges to the surface.
Just like a human’s true nature
seeping out.
Translated from the Russian by Olga Livshin and Andrew Janco
* * *
The country lies like a puddle on a military map,
any country gets attacked in March,
June, July, August, September, October,
while it rains outside and maps are strewn in courtyards.
Stop, who’s here, a general on cotton legs,
he is followed by a man without a world, and the world is fucked,
the world gets a checkmate and Russian “mat”, three stories high,
“mat” is forbidden, so the world continues on the brink of war
between the caves.
A suitcase — purgatory — hell, a railroad station in front of him.
Who said, there will be no war? No one.
A small grey man has cancelled
the twenty first century,
he turned the hands of the century clock
to the wintertime of war.
2014
Translated from the Russian by Anna Halberstadt
* * *
I am a bird
with feathers in my head, my wings are covered with dust.
I am asking you to get out of my way, I’ll try to start
the flight from the ground.
I was flying in my heels, at the same height
as the birds, that were out for a walk.
I fell, broke my ankle. My lipstick
is smeared, my wings are torn.
Because there’s no reason to blow anything up
Many bandaged birds lost their hearing
from the bombs. And now they only can
whisper in a low voice to whales.
My nationality is called rooks
I used to walk in the black soil, that was alive
looking for worms, and now they write to me: “Beware, mines!”
Arable land, halfway walked through,
is covered with lumps from the blast waves.
I am a bird
Translated from the Russian by Anna Halberstadt