POEMS

 

Oleh Shaposhnikov
Translation: John Farndon, Kanstantsin Loichyts

 

***
FENIA

„You flew in.
Roared over.
Bullied,
Bitches – and you are happy…
Who are you?“ I asked them.
„You have three guesses, old woman.“
The house’s slate was smashed – shells came down on Shrovetide.
Like misfortune – rust-stained water in the wash tub.

Hanging on her wall, she has a very fine embroidery
Of the elderly Taras [1]. A wonky table and a chair.
Grandma Fenia’s rich – she has two cans of stew, see
Left by a soldier with his face on the left burned there.

The wind rocks the battered bucket that sits by the well.
A shaggy stray dog wanders sadly down the lane.
Grandma Fenia now takes her old Prayer Book from the shelf
And reads Psalm 109 slowly again.

[1] – Taras Schevchenko, Ukraine’s national poet

***
The sun up above smiles like a shiny sovereign,
And, unable to stay quiet, a bird shrilly sings
A stern and wise she-wolf’s thinking in her den
While behind in the gloom her little pups, dozing.

Looking at the sky, the dry grass sheds its pollen.
An unseen grasshopper saws its tiny violin.
in their piney camouflage, mushrooms start to harden
And somewhere in a nest: quails faintly squawking.

This spring the field was not furrowed with a plough
Tufts of dead foreign hair are stirred by hot wind.
Scared by the bomb, the boarlet, eyes red-hot now,
Dives with soldiers into a hole in the ground
Then rubs itself
Against a boot.

*** 
In the carriages, moaning, creaks and alarms
Packages and bags crammed overhead
A little girl bandages up a doll’s arm –
„Be a little patient“, she said.

The sky turns black, Jehovah stays silent,
And the cherry trees blossom alone
The souls of small children unborn stray
Through the maternity wards on their own.

In the dark night,
With unclosed eyelids.
Thousands of families into mourning go,
All the disguises now forever shed
We are not ‚one people‘.
We are not, no.