Two Russian Poems from Berlin

Abstract

Two Russian Poems from Berlin Maria Stepanova Translations from the Russian "Pale blue and a flag inside, can't see which one …" Pale blue and a flag inside,can't see which one.Living people, two, chasea ball. A live oneIn a cook's apron stretchedacross his belly,Holds a white cigarette bythe café's back door. A woman, glasses perchedupon her living nose.Living dogs are straining at the leash.Airy summer shirts, light jackets,As expected of the living,billow in the wind.Nothing gives away the placewhere all this is going down. Here no one lies facedownin water, no oneInexplicably refuses, inViolation of all the rules of decency,To get up, revive, rejoin theworld of the living. Even the ball, look, it doesn'tlie, it bounces. May 24, 2022 "While we slept, we bombed Kharkiv …" While we slept, we bombed Kharkiv Afterward, a little later, the kettle with its whistleAnd the old house's tree trunks trunking full of sunAnd throwing wide the summer shuttersSweet kisses tears and oh the dawn, the dawn And Kharkiv breathed its last in blackest smoke While we ate, we bombed LvivAnd after enteredThe wrinkled water, elders firstIn the smoke of barbecuesClanged dragonflies Afterward we sang in chorus of how the banksWere blanketed with hundreds of shot-down dead And so it went, waddling like a duck,A morning in July. July 9, 2022 [End Page 45] Editorial note: Turn to page 58 to read a biography of Ainsley Morse. Ainsley Morse Ainsley Morse teaches in the Russian department at Dartmouth College and is a translator of Russian, Ukrainian, and former Yugoslav literatures. Her research focuses on the literature and culture of the postwar Soviet period, particularly unofficial or "underground" poetry, as well as contemporary russophone poetry, East European avant-gardes, and children's literature. Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma