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Polina Cosgrave. Cargo

 
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.

 

About the Author:

1. IMG_20200929_173816(1)
Polina Cosgrave
Arklow, Ireland

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).

Polina Cosgrave Полина Косгрейв
Bookshelf
by Aleksandr Kabanov

A book of wartime poems by Alexandr Kabanov, one of Ukraine’s major poets, fighting for the independence of his country by means at his disposal – words and rhymes.

by Mark Budman

Every character in these twenty-two interlinked stories is an immigrant from a place real or imaginary. (Magic realism/immigrant fiction.)

by Andrey Kneller

In this collection, Andrey Kneller has woven together his own poems with his translations of one of the most recognized and celebrated contemporary Russian poets, Vera Pavlova.

by Osip Mandelstam

This collection, compiled, translated, and edited by poet and scholar Ian Probstein, provides Anglophone audiences with a powerful selection of Mandelstam’s most beloved and haunting poems.

by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry

Four teenagers grow inseparable in the last days of the Soviet Union—but not all of them will live to see the new world arrive in this powerful debut novel, loosely based on Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

 

by Victor Enyutin

A book of poems in Russian by Victor Enyutin (San Francisco, 1983). Victor  Enyutin is a Russian writer, poet, and sociologist who emigrated to the US from the Soviet Union in 1975.

Videos
Three Questions. A Documentary by Vita Shtivelman
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Poetry Reading in Honor of Brodsky’s 81st Birthday
Length: 1:35:40