Poems by Olga Livshin
Julia Musakovska Toasts the New Year
Some of my old poems
fit these times.
Are these times all that new?
A picture from Kharkiv:
a boy hides in his bathroom.
His mom, wounded by shattered glass:
“fireworks” on New Year’s Eve.
Thank you, air defense, for guarding
our slumber. Happy New Year.
From 2022, loss moved into
this year. Grateful
to pick up my son from school,
wander the streets of Lviv,
and watch black birds alight
on mistletoe nests.
Then they take off again –
a breaking agate necklace.
Gratitude and light
move into the next year,
which will no doubt be
just as straining.
I’ll do my part.
Happy New
Year, my dears.
§
Note: This poem is a collage of excerpts from Facebook posts by the Ukrainian poet Julia Musakovska, December 31, 2023, to January 2, 2024. Reviewed and approved by the author.
Poets Have Tunnel Vision, Lyudmyla Khersonska Says
It is important to talk to evil.
Children talk: “Hey darkness,
I’m not afraid!” They get up
at night. A dialogue with darkness.
During an air raid, I would talk
to my cats, my plants, or lay a spell
on the enemy’s bombs. In wartime,
people want help with the names of things —
a poem is a prayer. Women fight and heal,
take the kids to safer places, write anger.
Now I have to read about the difference
between different missiles, to tell by ear
what was flying, where it might fly.
Now I walk around the castle and think:
“Such a beautiful, smart building…
The walls are thick, the windows, small. . . .”
We had an earthquake here. Everything
is shaking. The building… But you think
it is the Russians firing at your home.
I came out of the building smiling.
§
Note: This poem was created from Lyudmyla Khersonska’s statements in her interview “A Poem as a Shield and a Prayer” by Olga Livshin for The Rumpus, July 24, 2023, online at https://therumpus.net/2023/07/24/lyudmyla-khersonska/. Reviewed and approved by the author.
Olga Livshin is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman. She co-translated Lyudmyla Khersonska’s poetry collection Today is a Different War and A Man Only Needs a Room by Vladimir Gandelsman. Her work appears in POETRY magazine, New York Times, and Ploughshares.
Back to Table of Contents for Translation and Transition