The war in Ukraine drags on, mostly ignored by the U.S. media. Boring stuff, you know. Yesterday’s news regurgitated. Unless, of course, there is a particularly unfortunate atrocity or a visit by some high muckety-muck or rock star.
The book Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine (Boston, Academic Studies Press, 2017) edited by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky reflects the experience of war back when it was a supposedly low-boil regional conflict with Russian supported separatists. The words and images created an impression of a shimmering landscape that kept shifting and changing. It is these moments that move us most—the moments when things no longer make sense but are about to start making sense again. Meanings changed, old words acquired new connotations, language itself wrung out of the usual course and meanders. In principle, there is nothing strange about language evolving to describe the changing reality. What’s uncanny is how quickly this happens like watching a blossom burst out of a bud, open and close rapidly a dozen of times, wilt away, and disappear, all in a matter of seconds. War puts language change in fast-forward.
Here are selections from the book.
Vasyl Holoborodko was born in Adrianopil, Luhansk oblast, in 1945. In 1965, due to his alleged anti-Soviet views and refusal to cooperate with KGB, Holoborodko was expelled from the university. His work was banned from publication in the Soviet Union for the following twenty years. The indictment also meant that he had severely limited employment opportunities. From the time of his indictment and through the period of Perestroika, Holoborodko had worked as a miner, builder, and farmer. In 1988, with the change in the political climate, Holoborodko published several collections of poetry and was able to resume his studies. His work has been translated into English, Portuguese, Polish, German, and other languages. Holoborodko is the recipient of several prizes, including the Shevchenko Prize, the top national literary award in Ukraine.
I Fly Away in the Shape of a Dandelion Seed
I know that from here you cannot escape by plane —
you have to be able to fly on your own.
Cats in the house, so many cats,
gathered from the whole neighborhood
(how did they catch a whiff of my departure?)
not our cats but feral cats,
although there is no such a thing as a cat gone wild.
Cats as a warning and threat to my flight
as a bird,
they notice a red spot on my chest
like a linnet’s,
so I’m forced to take flight in the form of a dandelion seed:
I leave the house in search of wide open spaces,
past my garden and into the street
and float toward
a direction very remote —
now the wind gusts will
carry me away, away!
—Vasyl Holoborodko
Translated from the Ukrainian by Svetlana Lavochkina
Lyudmyla Khersonska was born in Tiraspol, Moldova, in 1964. She is the author of two books of poetry, Vse svoi, named one of the ten best poetry books of 2011, and Tyl’naia-litsevaia in 2015. Her work has received several literary awards, and she has been named laureate and winner of the Voloshin competition. Her poems appear in many journals, including Novyi Mir, Znamia, Kreshchatik, Interpoeziia, and Storony sveta, and have been translated into Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and German. She gave poetry readings in Moscow, Kyiv, Lviv, Munich, and New York. Khersonska also translates English language poets into Russian, including Vladimir Nabokov and Seamus Heaney. She has spoken about Russia’s war in Ukraine and read her poetry about the war several times on Radio Liberty. Her latest book, Tyl’naia-litsevaia, includes poetic reflections on Russian aggression in Ukraine. Khersonska lives in Odessa.
The whole soldier doesn’t suffer —
it’s just the legs, the arms,
just blowing snow,
just meager rain.
The whole soldier shrugs off hurt —
it’s just missile systems “Hail” and “Beech,”
just bullets on the wing,
just happiness ahead.
Just meteorological pogroms,
geo-Herostratos wannabes,
just the girl with the pointer
poking the map in the stomach.
Just thunder, lightning,
just dreadful losses,
just the day with a dented helmet,
just God, who doesn’t protect.
a—Lyudmyla Khershonsa
Translated from the Russian by Katherine E. Young
Buried in a human neck, a bullet looks like an eye, sewn in,
an eye looking back at one’s fate.
Who shot him there? Who gave the order, which man?
Who will bury him, and what’s the rate?
When it comes to humanity, war is the beginning and end.
Whoever attacks you, don’t turn your back.
Says the Lord: For my people are foolish, they have not known me,
they are silly children and they have no understanding.
But the children feel as strong as their machinery,
mass-produced, with plenty of seamstresses for repairing:
some ladies patch holes, others fix neck bones,
still more sew on buttons that were torn away from hands.
And the Lord says: They are wise in doing evil — but,
says the Lord — they do not know how to do good.
But the children, if they survive, say it was luck,
and if they die, they think that was yesterday,
today is another day,
and the seamstresses stand with a shroud, telling them, “Put this on.”
How long must we put up with the flags, the trumpets calling us into the fray?
What beast has awakened? Where did our special forces land?
Who shot that man in the back? Who gave the command?
Who will bury him, and what’s the rate?
—Lyudmyla Khershonsa
Translated from the Russian by Olga Livshin and Andrew Janco.
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