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* * *
Under martial law
I drink tea, boil oatmeal,
and watch TV from the corner of my eye.
Under the laws of wartime
I’m afraid to see, I’m afraid to participate,
I’m afraid to even think about –
Under martial law.
I sleep, make love, and text
Under martial law.
I don’t let myself go too far
and think differently than –
I end up just sitting in silence
in front of a blank computer screen,
from which all icons have disappeared.
Only the icons on the wall are left.
They stare reproachfully, they ask me:
Why do you sit in silence?
Why don’t you raise your voice?
And I answer them all, those icons and these:
I’m scared, o icons and icons,
I’m scared not so much of gunshots –
as of a total uselessness of EVERYTHING.
…And I will continue my silence before the emptiness;
Yet in the end, I will be shot anyway
Under martial law
* * *
По законам военного времени
я пью чай, варю овсянку,
смотрю краем глаза телевизор.
По законам военного времени
я боюсь видеть, боюсь участвовать,
боюсь даже подумать о.
По законам военного времени
я сплю, занимаюсь любовью и пишу смски
По законам военного времени
я не позволяю себе заходить слишком далеко
и мыслить иначе, чем.
В итоге я просто сижу молча
перед пустым экраном компа,
с которого исчезли все иконки.
Остались только иконы на стене.
Они глядят с укором, они спрашивают:
Почему ты сидишь молча?
Почему не возвысишь свой голос?
А я отвечаю им всем, и тем, и этим:
мне страшно, иконы-иконки,
мне страшно даже не от выстрелов –
от тотальной бесполезности ВСЕГО
…И я продолжу своё молчание перед пустотой;
Но в конце концов меня всё равно расстреляют
По законам военного времени
Translated from Russian by Nina Kossman
Born in Moscow, Tatiana is a poet, essayist, literary critic, translator, editor, graphic artist, and book designer. She has authored eight books of poetry.
She has a degree in journalism from the Moscow State University;she did her graduate work at the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University, receiving her PhD in philology in 1997. She is a board member of Sreda (Thin Media), the editorial board of the international journal of literature and art; Moscow Union of Writers (2002), Moscow Union of Writers (2017); Creative Union of Artists of Russia (1996), etc. Her work has been published in Russian and foreign periodicals, and translated into English, Armenian, Bulgarian, Italian, Nepali, Kyrgyz, and Japanese.
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.
