WORDS LIVE ON // Vasyl Doroshenko

Down through the ages, Russia has tried to kill the Ukrainian identity. They have done everything to present Ukraine as the rural outskirts of the ‘great, educated and advanced’ Russian empire. But the ones who proclaimed themselves enlighteners were merely butchers, murderers. They did everything they could to erase Ukrainian culture, traditions, and even the Ukrainian language itself.

And they are still doing this, even now, literally. During the last eleven years of war, Russia has killed hundreds of people of literature. Writers, poets, translators, editors, publishers and librarians. Ukrainian men and women. As you read these words, others are left to disappear in an unread draft forever.

There is a project called Nedopysani (Unfinished in English). It’s a memorial site for people of literature who will never be able to put that final dot in their notebook, who will never be able to take into their hands their first published book. And so, this is our hard and painful mission. This is what we must do for them. It is inevitable.

Today, we present the next instalment of our translation series, ‘Words Live On’. We have done our best, and we hope that it will speak to our Dear Readers in a way that cold, clinical war statistics cannot.

Glory to Ukraine! To our heroes — glory!

A city, where from an abandoned railway track,
And the ruins of a theatre long hushed, grass grows.
’cause there the basements contain more than the roofs.
Maybe, from there something whispers to the grass: “Grow!”
Maybe, one cannot get to know the whole city
’cause the grass has a gift for concealing steps and moves.
One wouldn’t dare to go without the grass’s favour
That swallows the city and a low scream: “Escape!”
And the buzz of kiddies, and the low murmur of a mob…
The grass has flattened the city. But you get to burn the grass…

Місто, де з забутого від залізниці полотна
І від руїн театру, що затих давно, росте трава.
Бо там підвали містять більше ніж дахи.
Напевне, з них й шепочуть тій траві: «Рости!»
Напевне, годі місто те усе пізнати,
Бо має дар трава всі кроки й рухи заховати.
Піти кудись не зважаться без милості трави,
Яка поглине місто і тихий крик: «Втечи!»,
І гомін дітвори, й затвірний гам юрби…
Трава зрівняла місто. А ти траву спали…

Original poem by VASYL DOROSHENKO
Translation by TETIANA ALEKSINA

© All rights reserved 2013

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // The Dove And The Ant. by Jean de La Fontaine

The same instruction we may get
From another couple, smaller yet.

A dove came to a brook to drink,
When, leaning o’er its crumbling brink,
An ant fell in, and vainly tried,
In this, to her, an ocean tide,
To reach the land; whereat the dove,
With every living thing in love,
Was prompt a spire of grass to throw her,
By which the ant regain’d the shore.

A barefoot scamp, both mean and sly,
Soon after chanced this dove to spy;
And, being arm’d with bow and arrow,
The hungry codger doubted not
The bird of Venus, in his pot,
Would make a soup before the morrow.
Just as his deadly bow he drew,
Our ant just bit his heel.
Roused by the villain’s squeal,
The dove took timely hint, and flew
Far from the rascal’s coop; –
And with her flew his soup.

by JEAN DE LA FONTAINE (1621-1695)
Public Domain Poetry

gotcha! (snake vs. mongoose girl)

you hiss, “you won’t find me”
and hide in the long grass
like the snake that you are

your coils seek to bind me
i plod through the morass
holding my plastic jar

boo! i get behind thee
you’ll surely try to pass
but i won’t let you get far

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2020

ABSURDIS EXTREME // Case Study #75 [15/03/2110] by B.A. Loney

This is the story of some grass that was rather illiberal. It took its own sweet time to grow, and it grew anywhere and anyhow. Yup, it was an uncultured mess. Even the city’s pavements were unable to tame it.

The grass wasn’t the same green as all the other grass. Its green was less radiant, less prone to reflecting the sun’s rays in a manner that pleased the eye. It was bushy and undisciplined. Sometimes it waved provocatively in the breeze, but usually it just sat there, stiff and foreboding. It was large of blade, and shameless and unapologetic.

This meant that people were afraid to leave their homes. Children would wail upon seeing it, and hide beneath their nannies’ hems. Elders refused to play cricket in the city park. Even the rain stopped falling there. It’s painful for gentle drops to plash against such proudly rigid grass.

One day, the grass grew out of a punk rocker’s left ear. She didn’t notice this because her mohawk was the same colour, and she hardly ever looked at herself in the bathroom mirror anyway. She wasn’t vain like all those prissy little daddy’s girls that used to tease her at school.

Still, she’d always wanted to be a flame-haired pony, which is why she couldn’t pass up an offer of Barclay’s Miracle Hair Crème when she was at the subway. A shady looking specimen was there doing the selling, and she totally fell for it. He whispered something in conspiratorial tones about this being a once-in-a-lifetime exclusive offer and how she was in luck.

Apparently, this miracle crème had been specifically produced for the ponies at the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace. He’d been shipped the last remaining bottle from a secret factory somewhere in Pakistan. It was a miracle that he was even able to get a sample as it was never intended for public sale.

So, the punk rocker paid $1.50 for this two litre bottle of especial regal goodness, and hurried home. She couldn’t wait to use this miracle crème, to finally feel like one of those majestic ponies at the royal stables. She was going to whicker up a storm. To stamp her hoof something fierce. She would flick her flamey mane with glorious abandon.

The miracle crème smelled like heaven, like fresh unicorn farts on a dewy autumn morning—but with a hint of ambrosia and oats. By god, the punk rocker couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t! She soaped and lathered and rubbed herself, and then washed the foam away. Then again. And again. And again. At some point she laughed in her happy delirium, and that laugh sounded rather like a neigh.

But the punk rocker was oblivious to all of this. She just wanted to get lost in being a pony, so continued to bathe. Then, after ten minutes of this madness, she began to feel a ravenous hunger. But why? She sniffed the air. Oh! Was that enticing smell… grass? And then just like that she began to chew the grass growing out of her left ear.

If grass could scream, then this grass would have done it. The pain was excruciating! It was being eaten alive, and there was noting it could do about that. If only it had grown out of Lady Gaga’s brassiere instead. Then it would have been famous, and idolised by millions across the globe.

But, no. It got eaten. The end.

Oh, hold on. Not the end because then she ate all the grass that has ever existed everywhere ever. And that’s how the entire earth became a barren wasteland.

Okay, now it’s the end.

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2019