A poem by Serhiy Zhadan, my translation.
--
He was a regular Amsterdam mailman
A fan of ABBA and Tramadol
On the weekends - for something to do
He watched porn
Or met with his friends
The radical drunkards
Rather torn up, confused, troubled lot
Who have always reminded him: man, we have fucked it all up
How did it happen? How did it slide?
Fact remains:
We're in deep shit - just look around
Our own land has to offer
Only stagnation and moral decay
The liberals and the leftists for hire
Hold firmly in hand the positions of power
Truly, one's at a loss
To see how are we still somehow surviving
By which grace
We are so far kept if barely afloat
The EU itself is governed and led
By naive and retarded
There's lots of talk
Of freedom and progress
Right...
You just go out and try
To score some good weed
See how that will work
But - so said his friends
In the East
There exists still a country
Today, most likely,
The last one remaining, standing alone
Where sun of the freedom
Has not yet set
Where faith is put firmly
Into the people, free and unburdened
Come, man, try to establish some basis
For unrestricted transaction of commerce
Let's build some strong cultural bridges
Let's build something to last
There - so his friends kept on selling
Every house and home
As a matter of course
Are touched by the grace
There the churches
Even those of questionable Moscow Orthodox linege
Waive away curses and minor transgressions - no questions asked
And to Jah during daily service
Give recognition, and praise
The artisans and other producers
Stand all as one through powerful unions
And well-managed fields of collective farms
Give, as if singing,
Their annual yields of unparalleled size
There they drink absinth to cure common cold
And demons posing as women
Hiding deep down in their throats
The seductive and dangerous darkness
Will submit to your every desire
Go, man, but remember - the best is Afghani
So bring back some
Establish the plug
Such was their repeated
Not pressure but pressure
Sales pitch
So no wonder
That one of those days
Our postman succumbed and committed
The geist of adventure
Establishing hold
Winning him over completely
With promise
Of other, and new, unexpected and odd
And thus, he took a first step on this way
With some courage
He flew Air Donbass
An airline, in all fairness, having a decent track record
But serving for breakfast nothing except either beer or vodka on ice
He ordered the brew
Taking a sip
He flew over the border of Schengen region
All his possessions
Left behind
Alighting, somewhat gratefully, in the city of Donetsk
Of all foreign tongues speaking only some Greek
Which supposedly every other local could also speak
He was spotted and cared for by an odd couple
The driver, old Ford being his ride, and driver's friend,
Irritable from being both dopesick and hungover
But the stars were shining with bright intensity
As if cheering them up
As if to bless the unlikely endeavour
Almost promising a successful and satisfying result
The driver said: It's all good, homie,
Come, feel yourself quite at ease
Here there are friends all around - see for yourself, don't you know what I mean?
You have set foot on the Promised Land
We're gonna drive to Stakhaniv
Man, there's so much weed
Whole Amsterdam will be nicely supplied
I'd wager, for as long as a year at least
The space was bound by the evening limelight
Winter ruled strong,
The month of February
Had just begun to consolidate its hold
The moon, like a bird of prey,
Was with calm persistence
Sinisterly chasing them all the way
Lending the dark light to the world
The hills shone with vague menace
Ukraine was being hit by heavy cyclones
They raged all night
Drowning the souls of the unfortunates under the snowdrifts
Graves white and pure
The souls thus excluded,
Thus concealed by the cold
At the forty-fifth kilometre mark
Our three adventurers came to a halt
Surrounded by sudden ferocious blizzard
The darkness upon them
Turning complete
Visibility seized to be a fact
The temperature dropped in a way
Hard not just to notice, but to ignore
The driver said: Damn, brother, it looks like the end
Pray to your rastafari saints
The fuel had frozen, the conversation
Had quited down some time before
Death came from the ports, from Azov
And the daemon of sadness hovered about
The postman, to try and warm up,
Drank a bottle of deodorant,
He had on his person
He was trying, repeatedly, to call someone on mobile
But from the phone he heard only the standard:
"The number you are calling
Can not at this moment be reached"
Life, generally, is a bitch
As if you are drowning in a wide and fast river
And your death
Is not necessarily something which matters
It can go completely unnoticed
What usually happens
Is that the cell operator changes
And slowly but surely
The incoming calls are no longer connected
No longer put throughput through
#poetry #poem #poems #ukrainianpoetry #ukrainian #poetrytranslation #translation
