{little aster-flowers gone to seed}
{profile by the house}
I will present it in two parts. This is the first half (or so); my translation is a little awkward in places but I am definitely pleased with certain paragraphs... though they are not quite as they are in Ukrainian. (You can be very sentimental in Ukrainian and not feel like you are drowning in sap &/or cheese.) So though some of its beauty may not come through, I think I have managed to preserve some of the achy loveliness in a few places.
White Flowers – Mykola Vinhranovskyj
It was still before sorrow. Before the golden farewell of the groves, where the blue poplars blossomed and milkweed lay on the dry banks of the river between the cliffs and the hawthorn; still before the blooming of the vines & wild dog-toothed rose...
*
“Do you want it?”
“No.”
“You do want it.”
“I’m telling you, no.”
“You don’t understand me.”
“I do understand. But, no.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
“Maybe not...”
*
It was still summer. These were quiet days over the steppes, with the calm sky rippling above the water, and perch seen lying on the yellow river bottom.
We were waiting for autumn.
We were returning from Mount Synyukha. On our knees lay shotguns, and with our boat carried by the current, we crunched green onions with our bread; milkweed was blooming, and the sky blossomed neither white nor blue – it was becoming its own colour in this pre-autumnal time when the water flows mournful and transparent, and the birds do not sleep through the night.
*
A droplet fell from the oar.
From the grey bank a heron flew with her chick, circling low over us, and depositing something white near where Dmytro was sitting.
“Would you look at the spot she chose!” Dmytro grabbed his gun and fired. The heron looked back at her young one, waving her wing, and hid herself in the reeds and willows that separated us from the river.
“What if it was on your head?”
“So what?” said Pavlo, biting into a bluish onion. Pavlo had shot two ducks, I – one, and Dmytro, none.
The water quietly rippled against the banks, and there was a smell of gunpowder.
*
“Have you noticed, that every time we have a conversation, I always start talking to you first?”
“Don’t nag me. Honestly – why do you start nagging? Who needs it? No one. Not me, not you.”
“I love you. But you couldn’t care less.”
“No.”
“What’s that – no?”
“That’s right. I don’t care.”
“Don’t lie. You’re lying?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Because you’re a fool, such a fool, and you’re crumbling. Don’t be silly, my darling, don’t be so stupid.”
“All right, I won’t.”
“Don’t laugh! Just don’t laugh, what am I supposed to do if you laugh?”
“All right, all right...”
*
The pike escaped, and Dmytro once more grabbed his gun.
“See if she tries to get away from me again!”
“So what?”
“I’ll show her then!”
“You’ve already said that.” Pavlo was rinsing off a yellow cucumber in the water.
“I’m not a drinker, it’s you guys who choke down that moonshine who do all the bang-bang, and look – something fell on you from the sky.”
“Bang-bang! Bang-bang yourself.”
“Whatever, but I didn’t kill anything.”
“Didn’t kill!”
“So what, you didn’t kill anything.”
“Don’t kill it then.”
“Go to hell! Don’t bug me.”
“Didn’t kill, didn’t kill!”
“That’s right, I didn’t!”
“And what about us, we killed, yes?”
“Vasyl, turn towards the bank, let’s toss this ‘non-killer’!”
“Come on, boys. Really, what the hell for? Look, there’s the dike, get undressed, we’ll tow the boat.”
A second drop fell from the oar.
The rushing of the water, a row of green stones stretched across the river and beyond them, the willows below the reeds – all this was in our view. On the right bank was an antediluvian mill with three black, burnt stories, and a fourth hanging out over the water.
Here, the whole neighbourhood’s grainfields were milled, just as they were every year.
“Don’t rock the boat! Get rid of your pants.”
We undressed, & strode into the water, & the boat touched the dike nose-first.
“Lift it up, lift it!”
“I’m lifting, lift it yourself! What am I, an ox?”
“Turn up the tail-end, the tail!”
The boat went down. Up to our chests in water, we pulled it between the stones to the deeper part of the river, close to the mill.
There was a smell of flour.
From the mill stretched a long line of carts & cars with sacks of grain, and unharnessed horses grazed above the bank. Men were sitting on straw near the wagons, eating supper, playing cards, or drifting off.
*
“And you?”
“As you can hear, I’m not. I can’t sleep.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“So am I.”
“About what?”
“About you.”
“Me too.”
“Goodnight, then.”
“Goodnight.”
*
Wild geese in the sky! How long it’s been since I’ve seen wild geese in flight... Wild geese
circling above the mill, sensing the grain... Don’t circle, for your death lies in wait in our boat.
“Give me the gun, give it to me!”
“Let it go.”
Dmytro pushed against the water to the stern, but scraped his foot on an underwater rock and howled like a dog.
I said to him:
“Give it to me, I’m dying to use it.”
“Stop it, shut up.”
“Give me that gun, or I tell you, I’ll kill you.”
“Then just take it, here.”
Dmytro grabbed the gun. Up to his chest in the whirling water, he aimed it at the bellies of the flying geese.
“The water is swaying me, I can’t take aim.”
“Give it to me.”
“Here.”
I fired at these geese, as if they were my tears.
Fly! I don’t need you. I need only myself. For because you exist – the world, and everything else in it exists, and so do I. Fly away, for time is swaying me...
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