3 Translations of Iya Kiva from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser, Yuliya Ilchuk, and Katherine E. Young
***
every time someone’s born
on earth god sings arias in italian
in heaven god prays in latin
if the mom survives
she’ll buy the boy a phrase book
have him learn to drum the air with his tongue
thrust words whole phrases in front of himself
right up to intermission
and when the lights come up
have him find enough food for himself
and stock up on candles
for they won’t take anyone back
won’t accept you up above
and the path’s a distant one
no matter how thick the handbook or guidebook
you mistake the street or house number every time
or the girl who so often colors her hair
all the girls so pretty
work to work from work
worry from worry leading to worry
a whisper a timid breath
workerbee
when i was little mama asked me to call her Lyolya
not to say things the wrong way
not to buy more than one ice cream
and to listen to Verdi’s operas
i’ve got neither ear nor voice
still i try to be a good boy
mister give me a lollipop
translated by Katherine E. Young
***
I write to you from winter days
when the snow globe sky protects us
from all evils like an onion dome
it's a time to sing psalms and Cossack songs
a time to button our uniforms
always a good time for defense
and the young beadle rises at dawn
to make sure the rusty nail of a sun
doesn't pierce the holy church's marble vault
yet it turns out his faith is too weak
the sky cracks, shattering into tiny pieces
the cold light wraps the people in melancholy cellophane
at dusk the sky is covered with a scab of cloud like an open wound
and our heads are dusted with the ash of the first snow
and the local men women and children fill the streets
and they write letters to god on the earth's white canvas
god reads them aloud to his son every night
and Mary like back in primary school
carefully corrects their spelling and other mistakes
translated from Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk
Hannah
Hannah never sleeps
the children shriek in the playground near her house
they shake their heads and lower their voices a little
banning communication always leads to whispers
that roll away in tears like stones
Hannah never sleeps
and she loses track of her generation
on the steps along with her wet handkerchief
along with the scoop of ice cream
knocked from her hands by her blue-eyed pursuer Marek
who always teases her about her origins
Hannah never sleeps
and the contrast between light skin and dark hair
has already attracted older men to her, not quite 13
so do her coal black eyes
where twinkles dance the fiery Hopak
Hannah never sleeps
and she sketches those she's met in her life
Janeck who died last spring of the measles
her mother Maria, who lost her mind from grief and drowned herself
her father Yosef who went after the crippled Evka
granny who called her a heavenly lilly
and all those people who write "witch" on her fence
Hanna never sleeps
and at night, she moves her lips, barely perceptibly
save me good people
stop me
I've never been a child
translated from Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk
Iya Kiva is a poet, translator and journalist. She was born in 1984 in Donetsk. Because of the Russian-Ukrainian war she has lived in Kyiv since the summer of 2014. She is the author of two collections of poetry, “Farther from Heaven (2018) and “The First Page of Winter” (2019), as well as a book of interviews with Belarus writers “We will awaken as others: conversations with contemporary Belarus authors about the past, the present, and the future of Belarus” (2021). Her poetry has been translated into more than 30 languages. Translations into Bulgarian were published as a poetry book “Witness of Namelessness” (2022, translator Denis Olegov); translationes into Polish was published as a poetry book “The black roses of time (2022, translator Aneta Kaminska). Kiva is the recipient of a Gaude Polonia fellowship (2021), the Dartmouth College writer support program (2022), Documenting Ukraine program (Austria, 2022) and others. Based in Lviv, Ukraine.
Amelia Glaser is Professor of Literature at U.C. San Diego. She is the author of Jews and Ukrainians in Russia’s Literary Borderland (2012) and Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine (2020). She is at work on a book about contemporary Ukrainian poetry and community.
Yuliya Ilchuk is Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University. She is the author of Nikolai Gogol: Performing Hybrid Identity (2021). She is currently researching memory and identity in post-Soviet Russian and Ukrainian literature.
Katherine E. Young is the author of the poetry collections Woman Drinking Absinthe and Day of the Border Guards (2014 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize finalist).She is the translator of work by Anna Starobinets (memoir), Akram Aylisli (fiction), and Iya Kiva and numerous other Russophone poets from different countries. Awards include the 2022 Granum Foundation Translation Prize and a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowship. From 2016-2018, she served as the inaugural Poet Laureate for Arlington, Virginia.