Irina Evsa
trans. by Yana Kane
Two POEMS
That Winter
That winter
I was his, he was mine.
A she-fool with a he-fool.
I held the line—
forbade him to gaze into the dark,
lest his eye stray
to enter a haze
that sways, that sickens the mind
with hundreds of murdered days,
where desolate whistling pierces
a home broken to pieces;
stones rattle, rolling away.
There, windows agape, a wall
gasps for air as it crumbles.
Days rise and nights fall;
a clockmaker gone insane
keeps searching the rubble.
He calls for his daughter in vain.
In the cruel chill,
the city—bled white—lies still
like an empty first aid station.
Minutes twitch,
their nervous tic
speeding up to seconds.
Close the blinds.
Hide. It’s blackout time.
Switch off your laptop here.
…Even if I
had suddenly covered his eyes,
he would've found it all by ear.
The Handoff
Sometimes it’s just: Thank you. I trust you.
Sometimes I get detailed instructions:
how to interpret the opening stanza,
what tenses to use in the closing line…
The author tells me the story of the poem’s birth,
lingers on details,
as if to postpone the moment of handoff.
Permission to translate granted,
it’s time. I lead the poem away.
It follows me without fuss, composed—
a child who understands too much for its age.
Still, it keeps looking back,
gazing at the face of the poet,
taking in all that’s been familiar,
that now recedes and then disappears.
We set out to cross the space—blank and nameless—
that separates languages.
A silence stretches between us.
I might be tempted to fill it by talking,
tell the poem I know what it’s like,
leaving the mother tongue.
I’ve been a refugee.
I’ve translated my own words.
But I keep quiet.
This isn’t the time for my story.
Listening closely to the poem breathing,
I start to search for the right words,
the voice on the far side.
Irina Evsa is a Ukrainian poet from Kharkiv. She writes in Russian. She is the author of twenty collections of poetry and the recipient of several international awards. Her poems have been translated into several languages, including Ukrainian, English, and German.
Yana Kane came to the United States as a refugee from the USSR. She holds a BSE from Princeton University and a PhD in Statistics from Cornell University. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is grateful to Bruce Esrig for editing her texts.