Painting: Another Kind of Icon
By
UKRAINIAN POEMS ABOUT
CHORNOBYL
(in
translation)
(NOTE: Chornobyl is the name
of the town in
FORESTS NEAR PRYPYAT
by Oksana Pakhliovska
Forests near Prypyat flare.
Dry
Forests
Burn
in May.
... Voices of your fowl
and your ancient stamps.
Age-old pine forests
now suddenly
defenseless.
These burned-down trunks
and crowns reduced to ashes!
Smoke hovers above pines,
and you
raving
in the
rain.
There will be neither years
nor centuries for you,
but ahundred fires and scorched
fields.
You don't have to grow here,
for what
would you
remember now?
You toss black pines
like crosses above the ashes.
The burnt horizon disappears
beyond grey
winds.
...Your earth. Your river.
Your
conflagration in May.
The last bird on a branch,
A tiny nest —
like a
live coal.
...You burn, pinned to the
earth,
for your roots— are here.
Translated by Michael M. Naydan
CHORNOBYL'S VILLAGES
by Oksana Pakhliovska
(Traditional song)
I will not look. It never was
— like this.
Beside the road the same old
grasses grow.
But oh the dread—this
new made village
And these towns — now
lying empty for eternity.
New houses
— with no boundary, nor end.
Where can I turn for
consolation now?
The grove has no sapling
—to call my own!
Nor even a small path into
the grove.
Agitate, people, clouds and
birds,
Songs, trees, the tongues and
dialects!
Do you think storks returning
from warm climes
Will find their way across
these clones of roots?
Where will the emerald-green
grasses grow
Once all the living meadows
are all gone?
Agitate, people, while you
still live, —
Agitate, people, lest this
come to pass!
About us hums the worldwide
marketplace.
Belated realization wrings
her hands.
Ancestral memory — like
an ancient bard —
Goes to the
people, staggering and blind.
Translated by Volodymyr Hruszkewycz
LETTER NO. 34
by Sofia Maidanska
Chornozem has risen
and looks in my eyes....
Pavlo Tychyna
You'll always be able to find
me
quite easily in the desert,
amidst hollyhocks,
guelder-roses and wells;
like a pillar of salt
I'll be standing there in a
white scarf.
At the place where for three
hundred years
chornozem will not rise,
will not rise
will not look in my eyes,
at the tomb of my own people,
who haven't yet died,
haven't died,
have not died! ...
Cripples grow up!
Grow up deaf and dumb,
grow up blind,
leaning on crutches of a foreign tongue,
jumping frantically across a stage.
You'll always be able to find
me
quite easily in the desert,
amidst hollyhocks,
guelder-roses and wells,
like a pillar of salt
I'll be standing there in a
white scarf.
translated
by Larissa M. L.Z. Onyshkevych
LETTER NO. 27
by Sofia Maidanska
0nly once
does a clod of soil
fall on the grain
of our coffin —
But my dear one,
don't cry!
the time will come—
and my shoot will gently pierce through
the ceiling of my sarcophagus.
and I'll grow as a primose,
through the palms held tightly for prayer...
And Father shall shout:
At last!
It's time to leave the
Charred waters have receded
from Chornobyl,
and a dove
has brought a brach of guelder-rose...
translated
by Larissa M. L.Z. Onyshkevych
The above poems (except
"Love", below) are from a mini-anthology (edited by
L. Onyshkevych)
of Ukrainian poetry, included in Shifting
Borders: East
European Poetries of the Eighties, Rutherford: Fairleigh
Dickinson Univ. Press, 1993.
LOVE
by Oksana Zabuzhko
Embraces trickled down like
water,
a night lamp split our shadow...
Not an offering, not passion,
not a gift —
Just the
effort to stay alive.
From cities plagued by
strontium,
Over death-bed agonies
An evanescent bridge gently
illuminates
Bare intertwined arms.
As long as this sun is in the
night,
As long as these rapid
flashes continue —
Love, tremble, and shout
This— final! — moment at the tip of a knife!
Splitting apart the mirrors
of night,
Like portraits we step out of
frames —
But from our lips a rough
Breath dissipates like
ashes...
As if you wanted to catch a
breath —
But your lungs are filled,
And the imprints of bodies
grow stiff
In the hot crumpled air.
From where, how, and why
Did this pale reflection on
the ceiling appear
Look, my love, what's there
beyond the window?
He looked and said:
—
A desert...
Translated by Michael M. Naydan
(publ. in The Ukrainian
Quarterly, LII, 1, Spring 1996, 24)