by Lyudmyla Khersonska
где, спрашивает, мои ирисы
где, спрашивает, мои ирисы,
фиолетовые и особенно желтые,
вы не видели? такие большие,
с высунутым язычком и острыми
твердыми листьями, вот такой вышины,
вот такой тишины, вы не видели?
видели, как же, видели своими глазами,
денацифицировали ваши ирисы,
они готовили нападение,
вступали в евросоюз и нато,
собирали опасных биологических пчел
неправда. они ни разу
не выходили за пределы клумбы.
они цветы. что вы врете?
что вы все время врете?
вы их вытоптали. вам все некрасиво.
что вы все время врете, все время врете?
where, she asks, are my irises
where, she asks, are my irises,
the purple ones, yeah, but especially
the yellow ones. have you seen them?
they were tall, stuck out their little tongues,
their sharp, tough leaves, so incredibly big,
taking off like Jack and the Beanstalk,
maybe you’ve seen them?
oh yes, we saw them, of course, we saw them,
with our very own eyes.
we denazified your irises,
they had been preparing an attack,
joining the european union and nato,
stockpiling dangerous biological weaponized bees
that’s not true. they never left
the boundaries of their flower bed.
they are plants. how come you lie
all the time? you trampled them.
to you, nothing will ever be pretty.
why do you lie
all the time, all this time?
Translated from Russian by Olga Livshin
Lyudmyla Khersonska is a poet and translator from Odesa, Ukraine. She is the author of four poetry collections in Russian. In 2022 her joint volume with the poet Boris Khersonsky, her husband, came out in English translation from Lost Horse Press, titled The Country where Everyone’s Name is Fear. Khersonska was recently included in the list of “33 International Women Writers Who are Bold for Change” by Words Without Borders.
Olga Livshin was raised in Odesa, Ukraine, and Moscow, and came to the US as a Jewish refugee with her parents. Her poetry and translations appear in Ploughshares, AGNI Online, the Kenyon Review Online, and Modern Poetry in Translation, among others. She is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman (2019). Livshin co-translated A Man Only Needs a Room, a volume of Vladimir Gandelsman's poetry, forthcoming from New Meridian Arts Books in 2022, and Today is a Different War by the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska, forthcoming from Arrowsmith Press in 2023.