Language: Russian
Poet: Irina Yevsa
Translator: Jamie Olson
Region: Ukraine
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Our dreams gave off scents of sheepskin and milk
A poem by Irina Yevsa translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson
Памяти полуострова
Дом открыли, флигель. Шорохи тростника
запихнули в глечик. Кофе, спеша, смололи.
Даровали слизню имя — Три Толстяка,
пауку — Самсон, пятнистой лягушке — Молли.
Навестили пляж. Базар обозрели, где
разведённый спирт назвали татарской чачей,
черенком листа — червя в дождевой воде,
продавца чурчхелы — дерзким вождём апачей.
Дополняя смыслом, но не лишая прав,
всяку тварь живую мы воплотили в паре
с новоязом пришлых, сущее переврав.
И уснули, рухнув. Господи, как мы спали!
Ничего не слыша. Навзничь, потом ничком.
Сны овечьей шкурой пахли и молоком,
по краям холмов цикорием голубели.
Дул левант. Клешнями крабы скребли по дну.
Мы проспали голод, смуту, позор, войну,
наводненье в Ялте, засуху в Коктебеле,
передел пространства, времени торжество
над сиротской речкой, что по ущелью вьется.
И проснулись там, где не было ничего.
И забыли напрочь, как «ничего» зовётся.
In Memory of a Peninsula
We opened the house, the outbuilding. We shoved
a sheaf of reeds into a jug. The coffee
was ground at once. To all creatures, we gave
new names: the spider was Samson, the frog was Molly.
We visited the beach and the bazaar,
where we said a worm in the mud was a leaf stem,
rechristened local moonshine “Tatar vodka,”
and called the vendor a brave Apache chieftain.
We added sense but stripped nobody of
their rights; we brought each thing to life again
in our newcomers’ Newspeak, altering truth.
Then we collapsed. My God, how we slept!
We didn’t hear a sound. We slept on our bellies,
then our backs. Our dreams gave off scents of sheepskin
and milk. They bloomed with chicory on the hillside.
The wind blew. Crabs scuttled across the seafloor.
We slept through hunger, turmoil, war, and scandal,
a flood in Yalta, a drought in Koktebel,
the redistribution of space, the triumph of time
over an orphaned river held by its banks.
And we woke up where nothing met our eyes.
And we forgot if “nothing” even had a name.
Irina Yevsa is a poet and translator from Kharkiv, Ukraine. She the author of fourteen poetry collections, and her most recent book is Deti Rakhili (Rachel’s Children), published by Freedom Letters in 2023. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Yevsa has been living in Darmstadt, Germany.
Jamie Olson is a Professor of English at Saint Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington. His essays and translations from Russian have appeared in Another Chicago, Poetry Northwest, and Translation Review. In 2023, he taught as a Fulbright Scholar in Tbilisi, Georgia.
