TRANSLATIONS FROM UKRAINIAN

by Oleksandr Frazé-Frazénko

 

 

 

Ivan Franko. TO THE GRAY-HAIRED

 

You, brother, love Ukraine,

I don't! Oh, what a shame!

You are a patriot, you’re game

I am the dog to blame.

 

You, brother, love Ukraine,

Like butter, bread and bacon.

Meanwhile I bark and bark,

To keep her wide awaken.

 

You, brother, love Ukraine

Because she’s dressed so fancy. 

I don’t! Just like a slave, 

Who doesn’t love his master.

 

You love Ukraine. For that

You’re honored and respected,

For me, Ukraine is like

A bloody wound in my heart.

 

 

 

Vasyl Stus. THERE GROWS THE WALL

 

there grows the wall between the world and soul

play hide and seek so they don't recognize you

through layers of the deadly memories

numb thoughts and ice floes of your senses

the spurs went into such a frozen soul

unwillingness just shortens the desire

for seeking wells, in which endure forever

the world to recognize you and to kill you

with all of its resistless deadly weight

there is the wind that blows souls out of bodies

breaks trees, bends grass along the way and even

creates a multifaceted emptiness

that is exhausted by its own improvement 

such sadness everywhere! how many

fates are lost! how many carried on

down to the final breath, the final moan

to death. such sadness everywhere!

where grows the wall between the world and soul

 

 

 

Viktor Neborak. ROOM 

 

I'll have fun tonight 

because now I'm sad, she said

the elusive mood of a person 

who doesn't love you

And I built this day 

like a palace in the air

filled it with caresses and words

Every room would be just us

 

The room is blue, and 

the room is pink, so come in.

look at me that’s how I live 

 

So much I can give you this day

a song would be made of your breath

and people would stop in their tracks 

in the middle of spring

I would create like God 

You see, I'm all beauty, all majesty

I become a human

 

She's having fun in the evening

watching a TV program

in her ordinary apartment

in her ordinary beauty

 

 

 

Ihor Kalynets. THE FREE VERSE SENTENCE 18

 

taking the wind 

out of the white sail 

like a fish out of a net

 

removing a

splinter 

of unresolved longing 

from a stranger's eyes

 

stealing your beloved 

from her dreamless sleep

 

uprooting 

another stump of illusion 

from the wild field of the soul

 

having your ear 

to the wall of the day, 

like a prison cell

writing a free verse sentence 

to myself

 

three times a day 

I make sure 

 

if you are not 

a poet's denunciation, 

 

then what are you, 

poetry?

 

 

 

Hryhoriy Skovoroda. SONG 20

If one has a pure heart and soul,
He doesn’t need armor
And a helmet over his head.
Nor does he need war.
Purity is his armor,
Innocence is his diamond wall.
God Himself is his shield, sword, and helmet.

This holy city is not afraid of bombs
Nor mocking arrows,
It is not afraid of cunning faces,
Always intact — never catching on fire.
Purity is the diamond,
And innocence is the holy city.
Fly there and rest there!

The enemies are loved in this city,
They do good for their enemies,
They sacrifice strength for others,
They are kind not only to friends.
Where is that wonderful city?
You yourself are the city 

once you’ve rid yourself of the poison in your soul,
You’ve became the Holy Spirit's temple.

 

 

 

Yuriy Izdryk. BOSPHORUS 


I see the sky and I see the sun and
I touch the flowers, I touch the grass
I don't need more than I have already
I've got as much as I have deserved

it's all that came back, it's all that happened
and what's on top — a trophy for me
I'm leaving all the foreign train stations
I'm staying where I already left off

highways and railroads go through my body
rivers and bridges go through myself
it's a visa free zone right here in my heart
so easily here you settle down

it's now or never, it's your final score
it is my transpersonal Bosporus
your last commandment despite the customs
make love, not war, make love not war

 

 

 

Oksana Zabuzhko. I AM BURNING

 

I am burning with tenderness — 

I am molding your face:

Out of the darkness, 

out of the rain that blinds us both,

It appears — pristine as an exhalation:

«I love you».

And, dripping down, 

it tickles my fingers.

 

It's not a kiss anymore — 

it's a flight over the roofs and lanterns:

In the night sky, like chaos, 

swollen with freedom

Create me from space, 

destroy me and create me again.

Through lips that have seen me, 

take me into yourself.

 

I will return on the wings 

of your all-knowing hands,

Dazed and strange, 

with the tangled smoke of my hair.

So that the cobblestones would crack in envy 

when they hear my footsteps,

And through my gaze, 

in the middle of the night, morning arrives..

 

 

 

Olena Boryshpolets. DOES YOUR CITY HAVE ENOUGH BIRDS

 

Does your city have enough birds

everyone has the right to ignore them.

A blind man feels the sun over his head

without any birds’ words.

What is it all about and where have they landed?

those damn birds.

The deaf man notices lost things and bodies

there was a wall here

and it's gone.

Why did we look at

that living rib?

So how many birds live in the city?

 

 

 

Volodymyr Rafieyenko. THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (excerpt)

 

Language is the house of being. This famous expression belongs to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. No matter how we treat him and his ideological preferences, this man was right when he said so. Indeed, language, if it does not form a being, determines a certain range of human perception of this boundless world. What you are able to name, you are certainly able to see. What you can see, you have a chance to understand.

 

The only thing is that being, if we mean its truly ontological dimension, is much wider than any particular language. The unconditional correlation between being and language does not raise questions. What is questionable is the attempt to cram the entire valuable world, all eternity, and all otherworldliness into the framework of a single language. No matter how beautiful it may be.

 

It seems that the philosopher when thinking about the house of being meant not a specific language, but the very ability of a person to speak. Language as a form of consciousness, into which sometimes the bitter chocolate of our present is poured, and sometimes its steaming blood. And only if I try to think about it in this register, then there is a chance to understand how it happened in my life that at the end of my fifth decade I changed my mother tongue - Russian for now my second mother tongue - Ukrainian. And why I feel almost no discomfort when I think in Ukrainian when I write books or essays in Ukrainian.

 

 

 

Artem Chekh. A POLONAISE FOR FELIX (excerpt)

 

Lida had never been afraid of anything. Maybe because she did not watch TV or read the newspapers. Lida would listen to the radio and knit. She would sit in her small cramped room on the bed under a monochrome tapestry (a naked woman on the river bank), knit and of course, listen to the radio.

 

And also, Lida swam in the Dnipro all year. Almost every day, fearless and hardened by nature, she went to the river, resolutely crossed the long sandy beach covered with islands of ice and mounds of snow, walked out on the frozen surface, looked for an ice hole left by fishermen, took off her clothes, remaining in a faded pink and once red swimsuit, firmly rested her hands on the edges of the hole and dove in. And all this happened year after year, until one February day she didn’t resurface from beneath the ice. For almost a minute Lida could not swim out, an unexpected force carried her away from the ice-hole through the dark waters of the Dnipro, further from the light and closer to death.

 

 

 

Olena Boryshpolets. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE (excerpt)

 

Now I find myself somewhere in the Langeron area, or perhaps the Gold Coast, where we recently welcomed the dawn in a crowd, akin to wild children who have outgrown the lords of the flies. It's a lamentable truth that summer doesn't belong to anyone, not even to us, the seaside idlers who discovered each other in this anesthetic warmth, still savoring the times of Odesa's leisure with the hallmark of southern absoluteness.

 

Regrettably, the lord of the seasons scattered us to distant corners right after the cherry plum season. I close my eyes, envisioning us gathered around the grill on your terrace, no one eager to claim responsibility for tending to the flame. Eventually, fire and hunger overwhelm us. Everything is at our disposal, even Minotaur meat from the supermarket on Lvivska Street. Someone nudges a glass – I think it's Linnikov or Hayetsky, or perhaps Petrov, but definitely not Lipatov – and it shatters across the yard. The resounding laughter of everyone echoes in the aftermath of this smashing of expensive dishes. Five minutes later, a broom is already rustling in my hand, diligently transforming fragments of beauty into a melodic ring.

 

Through the wall of the house, I can hear Lukina sighing by the half-empty dish slide. In the morning, she will inquire hopelessly:

 

"Where's the service, girls? Where is my Czech crystal?" It's a little disheartening to think that you'll never receive my letters because I've chosen not to distract you from life in the capital.