"a moving grove" by Iryna Shuvalova, translated by Uilleam Blacker

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September 9, 2023 

a moving grove

Iryna Shuvalova
Translated from the Ukrainian by Uilleam Blacker

go escape while you can go escape
buy tickets for the last water train
which as it subsides reveals
curbs pavements the riverside
the anatomy of the sinewy city that lies
naked and unfamiliar like a man in your bed
go—escape while you can
 
take all your belongings
everything that’s yours
split lips cut knees
the cracked jar of a head from which
memory slowly seeps and all you can
leave just leave behind
the evening lights in the windows
the beloved exposed throat of the sky
the smell of the subway the lead of the river
 
go and don’t come back have no doubts that’s how it is
to fall into the bottomless well of a body
to throw yourself like a comb over your shoulder
to sow yourself across a field so that a host
of warriors might grow
this is how the needle passes
through the needle’s eye this is how the forest
shall come up to the walls
 
and start to tremble

 


 

їдь тікай поки можеш їдь тікай
купуй квитки на останній потяг води
що відступаючи оголює
набережні бордюри тротуари
анатомію жилавого міста яке лежить
голе й чуже як чоловік у твоєму ліжку
поки можеш їдь тікай
 
збирай свої пожитки
все що твоє забирай з собою
прикушені губи розбиті коліна
надтріснутий баняк голови з якого
помалу цідиться пам’ять а все що можеш
залишити залишай
нічні світла у вікнах
неба любе беззахисне горло
запах підземки свинець ріки
 
їдь і не повертайся не сумнівайся саме так
провалюються в бездонний колодязь тіла
кидають себе як гребінь через плече
засівають собою поле аби зростити
військо саме так голка проходить
крізь вушко голки так ліс
приступає до стін
 
починає тремтіти

From Кінечні Пісні. Copyright © Iryna Shuvalova. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2023 by Uilleam Blacker. All rights reserved.

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Today’s Poem-a-Day poem is presented in partnership with Words Without Borders. We will feature poems in translation curated by Arthur Sze on the last four Saturdays of September, which is National Translation Month,

Iryna Shuvalova’s poem is a signal response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it is not bound by literal facts. The insistent call to ‘go and don’t come back’ starts with literal loss, but it leads quickly to larger dimensions, to mythic and even apocalyptic dimensions of the end of a world, the world, through the title. Uilleam Blacker’s translation eschews punctuation and capitalization and signals another kind of ending of norms.”
Arthur Sze

Iryna Shuvalova is a poet and scholar from Kyiv, Ukraine, based in Nanjing, China. She is the author of five books of poetry, including Stoneorchardwoods (The Old Lion Publishing, 2020), named book of the year by LitAktsent and recipient of the Special Prize from the Lviv UNESCO City of Literature.

Uilleam Blacker is a lecturer in the School of Slavonic and East European studies at University College London. He has published widely on Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian literature and has translated the work of several contemporary Ukrainian writers.

stoneorchardwoods
(The Old Lion Publishing, 2020)

“The Ruins of Bam” by Garous Abdolmalekian
read more
“A Road for Loss” by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
read more

Thanks to Eunsong Kim, author of Gospel of Regicide (Noemi Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Kim’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.
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