nothing changes on the eastern front
well, I’ve had it up to here
at the moment of death, metal gets hot
and people get cold
don’t talk to me about Luhansk
it’s long since turned into hansk
Lu had been razed to the ground
to the crimson pavement
my friends are hostages
and I can’t reach them, I can’t do netsk
to pull them out of the basements
from under the rubble
yet here you are, writing poems
ideally slick poems
high-minded gilded poems
beautiful as embroidery
there’s no poetry about war
just decomposition
only letters remain
and they all make a single sound — rrr
Pervomaisk has been split into pervo and maisk
into particles in primeval flux
war is over once again
yet peace has not come
and where’s my deb, alts, evo?
no poet will be born there again
no human being
I stare into the horizon
it has narrowed into a triangle
sunflowers dip their heads in the field
black and dried out, like me
I have gotten so very old
no longer Lyuba
just a -ba
(Translated from the Ukrainian by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky)
