[Take immortality, God, but give] by Dmitry Bliznyk
A poem from the anthology In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine, edited by Carolyn Forché and Ilya Kaminsky, translated by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky, read by Robert (Bob) Shea
Take immortality, God, but give
me this cold apple cellar. Take the souls
and other toys, but let us live: not-Adam and not-Eve, not your son’s—
my son’s life.
Wet hole in a cellar
with a wooden floor – is a Promised Land.
But no, we need cement floors
and the smell of cats and mattresses and a bunch
of soiled blankets. The city breathes though they poke us with missiles’ needlework.
Watch: a mad tailor makes of a city a headless costume without
hands. This is your human being, God, and not
a retail display mannequin.
The future is a door of mud
glass, the color of raw diamond.
This door opens inside
my chest every moment.
Each breath in
is a breath out,
sometimes faster
sometimes not at all.
In a time of war
the future jumps out
like a frog, no, a grasshopper—
one second—
and there is nothing: no future—
just emptiness, pulsating.
In peacetime: the epoch licks us off
in measured strokes
but now—
now the mad teeth of a Kremlin gremlin
chew on us.
And our land is decorated with bloodied fragments
of cement walls.
I see a soldier’s hat
diving in snow after my neighbor Miss Valya.
The murderers are lit
from inside by the saliva
of their sick ideas.
I see them twelve miles off.
As the thoughts jump like pebbles
on thick ice,
the breath turns into a white seaweed.
We are holding hands
while night hungry like an animal sniffs at balconies,
eyes whiten: is
anyone here alive?
The walls of this town are tossed out of the ground with their roots,
the staircases are torn up like unfinished
poems.
The body on the asphalt is a black-red sleeping bag—
is that a person? I don’t know.
Is that a person?
The evening jumps.
We have no place on this earth, you and I, God,
but you can’t drown in the sea of blood, sea
free of people. Watch:
these centipedes of tanks crawling on
their mechanical knees
won’t swallow this street, that street, this street.
In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine, edited by Carolyn Forché and Ilya Kaminsky (Arrowsmith Press)
These poems in this anthology offer a startling look at the way language both affects and reflects the realities of war and extremity. The volume is sure to become the classic text marking not only one of the darkest periods in Ukrainian history, but also a significant moment in the universal struggle for democracy and human rights.
Purchase here.
Dmitry Bliznyk is a poet from Kharkiv whose work has appeared in numerous US literary journals, including The Nation, Rattle, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.
Translators
Katie Farris’ work appears in Granta, American Poetry Review, and World Literature Today. She is the author of Standing in the Forest of Being Alive (Alice James Books), and co-translator of In a Country Where Everyone’s Name is Fear: Poems of Boris and Lyudmyla Khersonsky.
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine, and now lives in the United States. He is the author of two poetry collections, Dancing in Odessa and The Deaf Republic. His works also include translations, essays and anthologies. He is a professor at Princeton University.
Editors
Carolyn Forché has published five books of poems, most recently In the Lateness of the World, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2021. Her works also include translations, anthologies, and a memoir. She is a professor at Georgetown University.
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine, and now lives in the United States. He is the author of two poetry collections, Dancing in Odessa and The Deaf Republic. His works also include translations, essays and anthologies. He is a professor at Princeton University.
Reader
Robert (Bob) Shea is currently an Adjunct Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology's School of Communication. He has an MFA/Non-fiction from Bennington College's Writing Seminars. Shea's writing has been published in Fourth Genre, Consequence and regional general magazines.