Poetry by Vasyl Makhno
in English translations:

PILGRIMS

Tell me, who are they, these pilgrims,
Maybe they are runaways, pursued even more than we are
R.M.Rilke

1
Who on earth was it that drove out beyond the hill of green light
endowed them with an insatiable desire to devour time
together with reddened birds
who circle above them but do not dare get closer

What's their offence that their life spent in wandering
is remembered by the faded hours and plants ?
The past century has been turned upside-down like a wine-glass on the table
and time flows out right by our eyes

The thickets of earthly expanse around us
and the golden locks of the autumnal ground
cannot be told apart from the locks of spilled darkness.
And we put on the garments of birds.

Having hidden the pilgrims in the bosom of the hill
the signs of the birds let us fly
toward the scent of a land which even the elders among us didn't know
and not a single bird ever saw.

A yellow shadow of light falls upon the thousands of bodies
In a torrent of solitude and fatigue
The movement of Divine inspiration lights up the way for us
With our eyes closed we find the promised land.

We, dressed in garments of birds, can only observe
The streams of air which hang above our heads…
And times are like objects scattered all over the house
They grind our conscience as if it were a stone.

Saint-John Perse's Ocean

For Vitalii Haida

Saint-John Perse's Ocean is the intention of dark lines
which have woven together into a hieroglyph of the name
of the river that flows into the pit of loneliness

the moon's thin horn has been chopped up by the waves
into silver needles into fish scales it shimmers
with painful light resembling the glitter of foil

autumn leaves stick to the body of a grass-snake
and crawl away with it into memory's burrow, leaving
the motherland-tree and sister ant to the gusts of wind

in the air - a piercing madness like an incision
bleeds bitter smoke and humid light
cobwebs ring with a high-pitched sound of broken glass

where dark light flows - and in the depths
of water's velvet scroll cascades in a gold satin-stitch
and fish skeletons cover this random embroidery

this is the mystery of the heart's cut root-seaweed
a sea-urchin bush-white when touched -
it shyly sniffs darkness and turns into it

and the brittle sugar of fog sticks like lime
to the seashore Asian blood reminds you
of an expanse an eye-circle cannot encompass

words which the tongue can't fling into dance
their transparent cloth-coarse and black olives
the wasp's ornament you can't reproduce and can't remember

dark nighttime water shines with seashells and starfish
shimmers with pearl and fades in the tar of air
thickens like zebra's skin on ribbed waves

stillness wraps the lines in the golden foil of a cocoon
the form of rounded time traced in ink
a circle of consciousness - white like the thread of a web -

the spiders of time and the mice of time - signs of existence
are covered by the moss of none - being they glare with green eye
swallow our thoughts and salivate over our shadows

the ocean is all around us- the hieroglyph of its name
who'll be the first to soak their feet and walk on water ?
and only a died out candle like a finger shows the wind's direction

+++
For Ivan Drach

Like a heavy door - you close the Millennium
the snow of the past flies after us
like stones. And only the hills and the foxes

are unmoving and warm, like the rain.
An empty tree gives us a ring the line
of its shadow - the crumbled glass of a sound -

and the earthly fruits scented by a fox grow bitterer
is it indeed river? And the air's black silk
tears where angels fly

ask no one - we shall close their lips with lock and key
no one will see them - and no one will hear
the flute of a voice resembling a lark song

for they have dissolved into white mist, into the milk of air
chase a shadow and observe the plum blossom
compose your songs whose every sound is a well of sorrow

the lines of letters are golden threads of light, and the yarn
of the pine forest. The river darkens, heard from the suburbs,
and last night's doubt solidifies in a stone garden

tell no one - for it's growing dark and the flame of a lantern
half-illuminates you a fox and earthly fruits
and from afar a river dins as heavy as a skirt

the stones fly after them the plum blossom
sticks to the lips you spit it out and do not understand
why trere is so much of it in the stone garden of solitude

Translation by author, Richard Burns, and Vitaly Chernetsky

Untitled

Fine like a stick-figure drawing.
A villager from a northern province
draws hieroglyphics

of silver trout swimming
through an open window
and through thick rustling grass
that cuts the sense of
the writing.

All his life he learned to join these lines
and only today
are the words illegible.

Maybe it's the name of a river
or a stitch of light that has no name.

And that is when the picture opens up
like the mark of a white lotus

Elegy of water

Every rainbow drinks water - and fish fly in the wind.
Deep oceans of the world - black hole - dust of thought -
fish slip from our hands - in return for five loaves of breads,
in return for a sorrowful glance pale as a bleached sail.

Fishermen arrive at boats overturned like turtles
who murmur about the old days: plink of water -
damp scent, freckles of salt - hideous jellyfish
stains cover the shore.

The boats are creaking - the wind dries their ribs
and green nets - not trees - sway in the shadows

Private history

" And some people traveled to the north
and others to the south
and they avoided each other for a thousand years.
Only those who went ahead -
left behind towns and villages,
graves and broken dishes -
and those were late
gathered the leftover silence".

I once read this in a book
with silver edges
and a clasp that lock with a key.

You so don't understand to which tribe
you belong.

Remember the thousand-year drought
you started?
One tribe returned to the north
and the other to the south -
all that was left sandy water.

Are you remembered these dark words.
And you hear - the dull neighing
of frightened horses

Untitled

You
see little houses - peasants - after harvest
a warm spring - planted in the stove of a house of
crickets-some ragged song -
a battle flag.

They
loosen their awareness -
release their strangeness - read the light -
breathe in the wormwood.

You
know everything is fixed - and everyone -
everyone lays side like straw in the wooden cart.

They
know clay and sand - burning wind -
and how to move from water to earth,

and everything to take along:
a flag, a song, a handful of seeds.

All the rest - just a shadow of sorrow
that falls from each word
you read here - my reader -

At a bar called Gosser

After my third beer,
smoke rings all around
a long-haired sculptor,
complains about the golden shadows of women.

Rivers of talk foam and creep
around this glassy shore,
flow in golden drops
on this dirty table.

There are certain voices I remember.
A torso lean as an orchard in spring
with smells of humid darkness,
sticky blood of pines,
every man's home,
bodies of desirable women.

That woman standing in the window
swaying in the foam of my bitter beer:
Aphrodite of the tavern.

Has it already come back?
: the warm words
: the bitter beer
: the rough lines of that horrible body?

Untitled

For a long time you prepared, as if in Odysseus's crew
- you devoted days to -
- thriftily written words -
that could be scratched out on the ship's mast.

A long voyage - a hexameter long
with which you traced the wooden boat's outline -

but the crew didn't listen
to your orders - your rules
couldn't suit their desires.

It's possible
to talk about poetry in a snowstorm
with a group of friends for a long time,
without knowing what to call it,
without knowing - for that matter - where it goes.

Translated by Kristina Lucenko

+++
you foresaw beyond the hills of a dream
a different life - an outlined semi-circle
and the tinted echo of scents
a lemon moon like a school lines
that now measure off for winter
the aging of death time and expiring
in green light cooper turned black
lives with us through the ruin of time
between the forewarning and number of hours
wine and half a loaf of bread cast shadows of the last day
on the page and the numb Div
a hundred-eyed hundred-winged
will not change his dual nature and you will leave
to seek with your gaze the river, the hill of stone
at what time do you think mouse-like
to continue dreaming in dreams?
and the guests who live beyond the hill
grew overgrown with moss like ancient echoes
and your dreams suppress your straying
and the rustling of the epoch either grass or corn sprouts
on the hills which you won't circumvent
and the sound to sound - of metal berries
you collect the paper you gash the chaos
and the murkiness of night and a stalk of strength
is already attenuating like the contours of hills
already fewer words remained for your lips to sculpt
the beginning of a book that was written from the half-
shadow of snow and the undersurface of a woodcarving

Translated by Michael M. Naydan

Automotive erotica

this journey across the landscape of your body
really requires of me
no driver’s license
nor any knowledge of the traffic rules
nor even the observance of those rules

I’ve learned long ago
- from those two hillocks with blue-veined
nipples
from those guard towers

one can descend down the supple curve of your belly
all the way to the well of your navel
and lower still – a dried crushed mulberry
is stuck
as a black oily dot of a birthmark

and farther on – a silky grove

and a long road

that has to be traveled
to-and-fro
to-and-fro
to-and-fro

sometimes it pays to shift gears

because the electric current of our movements
can turn to ashes

our bodies

which – indeed – some day will turn to coal
and blackish oily crude

Gertrude Stein

messages written in recent times –
speak of the state of the country and the stable of Gertrude Stein
one – in a state of war – the other – a Parisian poem –
composed of variations and reflections
abiding with you and within you to this day
- like the New York snow – that at times brings joy

messages written in recent times
- are addressed to poets and to fish – as a process of obliteration
the letters are stored in your days and files
with a memo: for old addressees
to lick the glue – like sugar – with your tongue
so as  to paste the distances together -

and further remain in this city –
a foul tramp posing as a muse –
to savor Gertrude’s rose in Bryant Park
to reminisce of Paris and its young “boheme”
who – probably – seizing upon her theme
of “generation lost” – will leave no mark

on the close-cropped head of Gertrude Stein
who with her texts constantly dawdles
looking  both like a grandma and a maid
she seems to always grumble and to quarrel
now cast in bronze she lingers in the shade
with bums surrounding her like paparazzi

she reads to them words of uncommon prose
one bum – with a swiped K-Mart cart –
listens attentively – which she enjoys
Gertrude in bronze converses with him
the way a Buddhist would honor a cow
rubbing the third eye above his brow

and in a hoarse voice – about Paris and the weather-
at the pedestal he leaves her water
and some food in a plastic can
puts on his earphones – listens to Joe Cooker
rubbing the numbness off his hands
performs in front of her wild dances

Gertrude endures all this in silence
as usual the bum pretends to be a star
she’s even glad to have the pleasure of his presence
- her bronze vest – heavy – presses hard
she’d like to join him in his dances now
if only that her buttocks were not bolted down

The weekend of an “American Family” 

every Saturday NN buys a phone card
usually at the nearest Deli Grocery
owned by people from Bangladesh
thus saving one dollar

on the way home he stops
by a liquor store
and buys
a one-and-a-half liter bottle of Absolute
thus spending twenty dollars

every Saturday NN
after guzzling down almost a liter of it

performs a ritual
like the mating dance of the birds along that river
where he had crossed over on an inflated plastic bag
from the Mexican side – seven years ago
and then spent a few months in an American
detention center for immigrants

he dials
- the country code – the city code – and the phone number -
he knows these numbers by heart
they’re etched in his memory like rust

he doesn’t have to call
but this is something sacred

while he is waiting for the connection
his “American wife”
- an illegal alien and a devout Christian –
and no less a sexy female –
is preparing dinner

finally he can hear the phone ringing
from his other life

his wedded wife
- who had pushed him out beyond the ocean
and now sleeps from time to time
with a neighbor
- whose wife
also works illegally
in Italy –

is constantly complaining about
the poor telephone
connection
after bringing up briefly
health
children
money

they wish each other nothing
and demand of each other nothing

for the last two years in  their
conversations there hasn’t been even a hint
of any verbal erotic play
- no hints – no verbal signals
that – as a rule – would be known
only to the two of them

just dryly:
about money
children
health

having finished
the conversation NN stares absent-mindedly
at the yellow wall
the favorite color
of a homeowner

while his “American wife”
is already dialing
trying to reach her own home

as always she gives instructions
to her husband
inquires about the children and grandchildren

and quietly
- so that NN would not hear –
cries her heart out into the phone receiver
to her daughter

and then they
have sex for a long time

hip-hop

for the sake of the heart that was ripped out with the flesh
for the sake of the wish to live like a human being
and for the sake of life
whatever it might bring

hip-hop

for the sake of this voluntary imprisonment
for the sake of this one-way ticket
for the sake of the money earned
for all the feelings now extinct

for this sacrifice offered
to the benefit of no one

hip-hop

hip-hop

hip-hop

Translated from the Ukrainian by Orest Popovych