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Emotions, which by now are gone,
as winter blues appear to be half troubles.
Global calamity is caused by certain evil,
which came on line, as winter ceased to be.
The wound is triggered by a February short circuit
to earth, it will be healing for an eternity, if at all –
in a planetary meaning, as well as others,
when an apartment building is annihilated live,
directly, aiming at the higher floors –
burning the kitchens, books on shelves,
children’s shoes, medicine on a table, a ray,
along with an old man’s cry: “No forgiveness, ever!”
As murdered March was falling to the ground,
it had a chance to let this April know –
the same conclusions, prophecies not heard
a man is still imperfect and unneeded, cruel,
yet, all in all so brave and even loved,
when uttering -“We will defend our city…”
When us and them as was before
determined, this century as well, by spilling blood.
When humans don’t abandon dogs and cats,
among the sirens, overcoming mirk…
Emotions have retreated, then have gone,
there will be time for all the measuring and damning
And yet, despite, what chooses to remain,
the awareness of conscience’ caustic smoke…
Forever Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol,
and that remaining prophecy: Will triumph!
The original
Эмоции которых больше нет,
зима прошедшая была из полубед.
Убожество – вселенская беда
в конце зимы вотнула провода…
Коротким замыканьем февраля
теперь надолго ранена земля –
в значении планетарном и другом,
когда в прямом эфире гибнет дом,
прямой наводкой, по высоким этажам –
по кухням, и по книжным стеллажам,
по детским тапочкам, лекарствам и лучу,
по старческому крику: “…не прощу!”…
Убитый март скатился под откос,
но до апреля истину донес –
по-прежнему не узнан имярек,
не совершенен, груб, не нужен человек,
но вместе с тем самоотвержен, и любим,
когда звучит – “мы Город не сдадим”…
Когда само понятие свои,
и в двадцать первом возникает на крови.
Когда спасают кошек и собак,
среди сирен, превозмогая мрак…
Эмоции ушли на задний план,
всему свое – проклятьям, временам..
В остатке совесть, осознание, едкий дым
Чернигов, Харьков, Мариуполь… Победим!
4/02-22/22
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Both versions (English & Russian) are the author’s.
Gari Light, Born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1967. Lives in the United States since 1980. Graduated from Northwestern University. Became a lawyer some short time after, and worked in the area of international jurisprudence, both in the U.S, and abroad. Light’s several books of poetry were published in Russian, starting in 1992. His English language poetry book entitled Confluences appeared both in U.S. and in Europe in 2020. Gari is regularly published in literary magazines and takes part in poetry readings on both sides of the Atlantic.
Every character in these twenty-two interlinked stories is an immigrant from a place real or imaginary. (Magic realism/immigrant fiction.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
