Translator’s Note
The texture of Irina Yevsa’s poetry in Russian is tricky to recreate in English, since its intersecting threads contain complex syntax, regular forms, and a lexicon that runs from highly literary to unmistakably colloquial. Form and meaning are entwined in her poems to great effect, and the scope of her work has recently expanded: as the sovereignty of her homeland has been repeatedly violated over the past decade, Yevsa has grown more willing to take on the mantle of poet-as-witness.
For instance, in an untitled poem published here (“He said, ‘I’ve got to ditch…’”), one of her first to directly address the war since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Yevsa puts the whole text in the voice of another persona, a Ukrainian man who has stayed in his country after the invasion and who endures the existential burden of the war. Yevsa combines colloquial speech with specialized terminology, highlighting both the speaker’s education and his hardscrabble wartime experience. I’ve done my best to capture that lexical range in English. At the same time, Yevsa uses a rhyming form with alternating pentameter and trimeter lines. Again, I’ve kept up the meter in my English translation, along with slant rhymes to echo the original text.
✶
Untitled
He said, “I’ve got to ditch this flimsy boat.
Each day, I lose more strength.
The war has stuck its bony hand straight down
my throat and scraped me out.
Inside, I’m left without a single leaf
or petal, cliff or wasteland.
Just look,” he said, “how light my shell is now,
as light as a fish bladder.
“I don’t read books, I don’t turn on the TV.
I crawl out only for grub.
I’m paranoid, I’m chronically fatigued.
Neither Freud nor Jung can help.
Lord, grind us with your palette knife down into
the dark, into the soil.
And no more poems — what use are poems these days?
We thirst for psalms and vigil.
“I’m shaking like I can’t get past a cold.
The air chills on my tongue.
I eat from plastic plates — no other kind
can I hold in my hands.
The New Year’s market, festive trim on walls,
a house decked out in garlands,
blue-sequined windows — nothing coheres. It’s all
dismembered into fragments.”
And then he said, “When I wash ashore somewhere
after this ship breaks up,
God, bring me back again not as a poet,
but as a lighthouse keeper,
so I will know the light is guided not by
the dark, but by his hand.”
— Я покину, — сказал он, — хлипкую эту лодку.
Сил всё меньше день ото дня.
Мне война запускает костлявую руку в глотку
и вычерпывает меня.
Там, внутри, уже — ни листочка, ни лепесточка
ни обрыва, ни пустыря.
Посмотри, — говорит, — легка моя оболочка,
легче рыбьего пузыря.
Я уже не читаю книг, не включаю телик.
За харчами — и в норку юрк.
Я — законченный псих, затравленный неврастеник.
И не в помощь ни Фрейд, ни Юнг.
Соскреби нас, Господь, стальным своим мастихином
до землицы сырой, до тьмы.
И не надо стихов — какие теперь стихи нам? —
только бдение и псалмы.
Дрожь, как будто еще не выскочил из простуды.
Стынет воздух на языке.
Я давно уже ем из пластиковой посуды —
прочей не удержать в руке.
Рынок, ёлок предновогодние позументы,
дом в гирляндах, окно
в синих блёстках — не вижу в целом: всё на фрагменты,
на фрагменты расчленено.
А ещё он сказал: «Когда я рассыплюсь в этом
судном взрыве на горсть песка,
собери меня, Боже, заново — не поэтом,
а смотрителем маяка,
что уверен в одном: не тьма управляет светом,
а его рука».
Two Refugees
For Yevgenia Morgulyan
He shot first at a rusty garbage can:
This sucks, he said. Screw it.
So he kicked down the door and killed my dog.
And then he killed me too.
I didn’t notice any pain or fear.
Just two loud claps. That’s all.
We got to our feet and walked past the field
and towards the riverbank.
The dog began to drag one paw and shuffled
sideways among the stubble,
no longer trotting forward but settling
her weight against my leg,
at any moment ready to connect
with me or take a swat
for misbehaving — a bullet in her shoulder
and weakness in her bones.
The river, in sync with the local landscape,
slightly slowed its pace.
I understood the dog would never manage
to get across that water.
And there she stood, utterly petrified,
her skinny belly drawn in,
looking up sideways at me with sad eyes:
“But what if we don’t make it?”
Two refugees, whose either/or chances
had senselessly run out,
we traded glances and slipped into the current,
wading up to our chests.
And like a strange, impartial language somewhere
beyond good and evil,
the river let us in without reflection
and carried us away.
Евгении Моргулян
По ржавому пальнув, пустому баку:
отстой, мол, и фигня,
он, выбив дверь, убил мою собаку.
Потом убил меня.
И не было ни ужаса, ни боли —
негромких два хлопка.
Мы встали и пошли, минуя поле,
направо, где река.
Но лапу приволакивала псина,
и боком по стерне
теперь не впереди она трусила,
а тычась в ногу мне,
в любой момент готовая включиться,
и даже огрести
за дурочку, с пробоиной в ключице
и слабостью в кости.
Река, вписавшись в местную природу,
слегка смиряла прыть.
Я знала, что собака эту воду
не сможет переплыть.
А та в оцепенении глубоком,
поджав худой живот,
косила на меня печальным оком:
«А вдруг, не доплывёт?»
Две беженки, чей срок на «или—или»
бессмысленно истёк,
мы с ней переглянулись и поплыли,
по грудь войдя в поток.
И словно безразличная, чужая
речь вне добра и зла,
река впустила нас, не отражая
в себе, и понесла.
Fall 1991
for Akhra Ajinjal and Eteri Basaria
It was drizzling. Logs burned in the fireplace.
A Russian, two Ukrainians, and a Moldovan
demanded strong chacha to go with their trout.
They waited. They talked trash to each other.
But were they all right? Here is how it went:
A loose fog slid in patches down the slopes
and blanketed the town. In the distance,
a mare, white as milk, swirled in a field.
The Abkhaz waiter set tumblers on the table —
not stemmed glasses — and rambled on about it:
“Lately the Svans are coming out of the mountains
like an avalanche, breaking everything in sight.”
They drank apolitically. Yet the eldest of them
tried to lift the mood with a flowery toast.
Things were no longer boring and not yet scary.
Things were not yet shameful but no longer easy.
On leafless branches, persimmons glimmered.
Palm trees rustled their broad, fan-like fronds,
which reappeared, as in a funhouse mirror,
on the surface of a car with Moscow plates.
It all unfolded pleasantly. Without a hitch.
The two Ukrainians sang a song, the Russian
ate, the Moldovan tried to catch a blonde’s eye
and didn’t hear a thing — or didn’t listen.
The meat sizzled. Fat stuck to the firewood.
A local simpleton munched on a cheap pastry
and muttered nonsensically, “Warry, warry,”
skewing the meaning with his mispronunciation.
The portly proprietor, nursing a case of gout,
flicked his abacus beads (we shared one currency).
. . . Svans came down to Gagra, overrunning the town.
And a bottle of champagne shot at the ceiling.
Осень, 1991 год
Ахре Аджинджалу, Этери Басария
Дождь моросил. Дрова в очаге горели.
Два украинца, русский и молдаванин
крепкую чачу требовали к форели.
Ждали. Друг друга виршами мордовали.
А хорошо ли было им? Вот как было:
рыхлый туман лоскутно сползал по склонам
и застилал посёлок. Вдали кобыла
млечно клубилась, белая на зелёном.
Официант-абхаз раздавал стаканы —
вместо бокалов — и пояснял пространно:
с гор в эти дни лавиною сходят сваны;
всё разбивают. Вот почему — стаканы.
Аполитично пили. Но самый старший
сходку спешил возвысить цветистым тостом.
Было уже не скучно, ещё не страшно.
Было ещё не стыдно, уже не просто.
На облетевших ветках хурма мерцала.
Пальмы шуршали плоскими веерами.
Их отражал, как выпуклое зерцало,
автомобиль с московскими номерами.
Всё проходило благостно. Под сурдинку.
Два украинца пели, а русский — кушал.
А молдаванин оком ловил блондинку
и ничего не слышал, верней, не слушал.
Мясо коптилось. Жир прикипал к поленьям.
Местный дурак ватрушку жевал довольно
и бормотал бессмысленно: “Война, война”,
суть исказив неправильным удареньем.
Тучный хозяин, нянча свою подагру,
щёлкал на счётах (общей была валюта).
…Сваны сходили с гор, накрывая Гагру.
И в потолок стреляла бутылка брюта.
✶✶✶✶
Irina Yevsa, who was born in 1956, is a poet and translator from Kharkiv, Ukraine. She is the author of twelve poetry collections, and her work has appeared in many Ukrainian and Russian literary journals and anthologies. Yevsa co-edited the anthology Wild Field: Poems by Russian Poets in Ukraine at the End of the 20th Century (2000), and in 2016 she was awarded the Russian Prize—an international award—for her collection Southwest, which is dedicated to Crimea. A volume of her selected poems, Common Land, was published in Kyiv by the Dmitry Burago publishing house in 2017. Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, she has been living as a refugee in Darmstadt, Germany.
✶
Jamie Olson is a Professor of English at Saint Martin’s University. His essays and translations from Russian have recently appeared in Asymptote, Poetry Northwest, and Translation Review. Jamie received a B.A. in English from the College of St. Scholastica and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where he specialized in modern poetry. In 2017, he received an NEA Translation Fellowship to support his work translating Timur Kibirov. Last year, Jamie taught as a Fulbright Scholar in Tbilisi, Georgia.
✶
C. R. Resetarits is a writer and collagist. Her collage art has appeared on the covers and in the pages of dozens of magazines and book covers.
Another Chicago Magazine 