Every night I hear planes
Flying over our house
I count them like sheep
One, bringing death to a village
Two, bringing death to a city
Three, bringing food for the soldiers
Who will finish the job
Four, bringing back the bodies
Every night I hear planes
Flying over our house
They hum like a swarm of bees
One, making a U-turn
Two, heading back at high speed
Three, what if this one is coming after us
Four, aren’t they all
Every night I hear planes
Flying over our house
I asked around, no one else is bothered
Every night I hear planes
Flying over our house
Not once they woke up my child
Smiling in her sleep
Every night I hear planes
Every day I hear planes
I shout over them
What I can’t whisper into your ear
ГРУЗ
Каждое утро летит самолётик:
Закрывай глазки, открывай ротик.
Каждую ночь летит самолёт
Горе в чужую деревню несёт.
Будем считать их, будто овечек.
Был человечек — нет человечка.
В гонке за смертью — только вперёд.
Раз самолёт, два самолёт.
Видишь, кружатся три и четыре?
Вспомни, что нам говорили о мире.
Пять самолёт, шесть самолёт.
Мёртвых обратно никто не везёт.
Зайке не слышно мотора, он спит.
Над ним самолётик, как пчёлка, жжужит.
Каждое утро и каждую ночь —
То сына, то дочь.
То сына, то дочь.
Both versions are the author’s. The English version was first published in Poetry for Peace, an online anti-war campaign launched by Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality. The Russian version is published for the first time.
Polina Cosgrave is a bilingual poet based in Ireland. Her debut collection “My Name Is” was published by Dedalus Press in 2020. She is a recipient of the Arts Council’s Literature Bursary Award for 2021. Polina is featured in the Forward Prizes Book of Poetry 2022 (UK).
The new poetry collection from Wayne Pernu, one of the finest poets writing in English today. This is one of those rare collections that calls to mind the great masters—Donne, Keats, Yeats.
Comedy and tragedy collide in stories of family life in Soviet Russia and the complexities of the immigrant experience
Boris Khersonsky and Ludmila Khersonsky write poetry that speaks to the crisis of our time, when refugees run from bombardments, and nonstop propaganda flows from TV. The setting is Ukraine at the start of the twenty-first century, but it is eerily recognizable anywhere.
A new book of poems by New York poet and essayist Sergei Shabalin. In Russian.
