Poets of Ukraine. Dmitry Blizniuk. Translated by Sergey Gerasimov

Also in Translations:

рыюа (1) (1)
Poets of Ukraine. Dmitry Blizniuk. Translated by Sergey Gerasimov

The 25th Hour

An empty swimming pool,
a palace of pale olive twilight and reflections.
An echo, a transparent wounded bird,
pushes itself up with webbed feet of sound
from the heavy, smug water.
You lie on your back – a resting Jesus in swimming trunks,
on a comfortable, chlorinated crucifix, and
contemplate the pulsing scintillations on the ceiling,
which is high like in a temple.
Fuzzy scales of light flow up, and  the fish inside
feels quietly happy, like a working computer.
And you dissolve in serenity;
crystals of mind and insanity melt while the blue night
is hissing with tires outside huge reticulate windows.
Here it is – the echoing, tiled, sterile feeling
of being out of time.
Now you are something that can’t be destroyed, wasted away,
or saved.
An ancient grain of sand has stuck to the palate of a sentient shellfish;
it has become covered with worlds, mirages, oases –
it’s so good to practice when everyone has left,
when all the sinewy frogs in tracksuits,
with wet hair, have departed.
And you need to stay – after the whole mankind,
need to spend your 25th hour on messages for bottles
(wet words run like lilac mascara on
damp eyes of your manuscripts,)
to spend time on training an alien inside
in order to achieve more than
the generous earthly life
can ever offer.
 

Translated from Russian by Sergey Gerasimov

About the Author:

2. Bliznyuk (1)
Dmitry Blizniuk
Kharkiv, Ukraine

Dmitry Blizniuk is a poet from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in Poet Lore, The Pinch, Salamander, Willow Springs, Grub Street, Spillway and many others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Forest (Fowlpox Press, 2018).

About the Translator:

1. Сергей Герасимов
Sergey Gerasimov
Kharkiv, Ukraine

Sergey Gerasimov is a Ukraine-based writer, poet, and translator of poetry. Among other things, he has studied psychology. He is the author of several academic articles on cognitive psychology. When he is not writing, he leads a simple life of teaching, playing tennis, and kayaking down beautiful Ukrainian rivers. The largest book publishing companies in Russia, such as AST, Eksmo, and others have published his books. His stories and poems written in English have appeared in Adbusters, Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, J Journal, The Bitter Oleander, and Acumen, among many others. His last book is Oasis published by Gypsy Shadow. The poetry he translated has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. His novel about survival in Kharkiv under heavy bombardment, originally written in English, has been published in a Swiss magazine, in German.

Dmitry Bliznyuk. Дмитрий Близнюк
Bookshelf
by William Conelly

Young readers will love this delightful work of children’s verse by poet William Conelly, accompanied by Nadia Kossman’s imaginative, evocative illustrations.

by Maria Galina

A book of poems by Maria Galina, put together and completed exactly one day before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is Galina’s seventh book of poems. With translations by Anna Halberstadt and Ainsley Morse.

book cover galina 700x500 431792346_806631041304850_1823687868413913719_n
by Aleksandr Kabanov

The first bilingual (Russian-English) collection of poems by Aleksandr Kabanov, one of Ukraine’s major poets, “Elements for God” includes poems that predicted – and now chronicle – Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

by Yulia Fridman

A book of poems by Yulia Fridman.

“I have been reading Yulia Fridman’s poems for a long time and have admired them for a long time.” (Vladimir Bogomyakov, poet)

by Nikolai Zabolotsky

A collection of early poems by Zabolotsky, translated into English by Dmitri Manin. “Dmitri Manin’s translations retain the freshness of Zabolotsky’s vision.” – Boris Dralyuk

by Art Beck

A collection of essays and reviews by Art Beck. “These pieces are selected from a steady series of essays and reviews I found myself publishing in the late aughts of the still early century.”

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