kalyna poems

{kalyna berries in the river valley}

{fallen kalyna, in the river valley}

Apparently the theme of the week is berries... It seems that my current favourite thing to do when I should be doing schoolwork is concoct poems interwoven with Ukrainian folk songs, inspired by the lovely kalyna-berries growing everywhere in the woods down in my part of the river valley.

Kalyna is the Ukrainian word for the high-bush cranberry, 'viburnum trilobum/opulus' in Latin, or 'anepeminan' in Cree (which inspired the naming of the Pembina River). These bitter little berries are medicinally very useful; as respiratory and digestive tonics, skin cleanser, menstrual discomfort, and even as a preventative for arteriosclerosis and to treat tumours.

It is a rather multivalent symbol as well, evoking remembrance & longing & liminal spaces between child- & adulthood & love of all forms & beauty & (female) sexuality -- in folksongs it often directly refers to a young woman, or sometimes even a homeland, a beautiful place remembered from childhood.

There are two folk songs that are part of this piece; one is little fragments from a song simply called 'Kalyna', and the other is 'De je moja myla?' you can click on the footnote-numbers & find the translations at the end of the poem, and then click them again to return to the poem-line.

I think songs about love triangles must form an entire sub-genre of Ukrainian love songs. In my use of 'De je moja myla?' I should note that I played with the gender-marking in the lyrics... usually a male sings the song, all wistful for his female love whose run off with Ivan, but the voice in my poem is female.

* * *

de je moja myla?[1] (kalyna)

de je moja myla?
hej, vona vzhe zaljubylasja v ivana..[2]

1.

oi u luzi kalyna[3]

in the breathing green membranes of leaves between us
there was too much tenderness

sweet innuendo pressed up against your shoulderblades
like riverbanks rising off the bed –

my palms kneading those knots
growing on your spine hard as beetroots,

your sweetly sticky temples a closeness to curl around, cocoon of dusk.

i leave my fingerprints all over the white webs of unseen skin
& this is when i always want to tell you –

but every time my ears burn dull red like smashed cranberries
when you speak about that crow-eyed boy who

made you sing like a swallow, sway
& you ran down to follow him

at the feast of john the baptist when the river swept the bridge away –

hej, vona vzhe zakokhalasja v ivana..[4].

2.

svit kalyny lamala[5]

i ran down to the river & stood in the whirlwind of leaves,
watching bonfires leap in the bucking trees, ash blossoms, falling snow –

when i saw you, the storm-trees were heavy over our heads
with the weight of bush cranberries

red as bitten lips, drops of blood on white linen nightshirts
that you had been wearing in his bed

made of mallows & periwinkles & a wasp-nest of nettles
& i feel them prick as i hold you

now under the red moon, red june with all the swallows
diving over the crumbling banks –

hej, vona vzhe je zaruchena z ivanom..[6].

3.

ta v pochechku skladala[7]

cranberries fall, blood drawn out of the heavy air
i hold your hands as the breeze sways the terrible vertebrae

of larkspur like the blue lightning of your mother’s eyes –
remember how our mothers said to us, ne jizh kalyny[8]!

gathering berries after frosts to make that medicine
that could cure anything! colds & tumours & haemorrhages, everything

except a heart bloated, water-swollen pericardium,
drowning in the problem of the body, &

the one it cannot have –

hej, vona vzhe vyjshla zamizh za ivana..[9].

4.

taj na khloptsi morhala[10]

i tried to kiss you once, i think it was in a dream –
your lips parted, red boughs split by sweet words

but then your mouth shrivelled up leaving crumbs
of communion & ash on my tongue. & that’s when

the swallows came & picked you up, carried you
swarming & singing & diving over the banks

to where he was waiting, somewhere beyond
the water, back in some heavenly springtime –

so i called back those flocks, called them
to a heart hanging on the reddened branches:

overripe cranberry with no one to taste it, so
let the swallows peck it, let it stain their hungry beaks.

---

[1] where is my beloved?

[2] hey, she’s falling for ivan...

[3] oh, in the meadow there’s a kalyna

[4] hey, she’s fallen in love with ivan...

[5] she plucked the kalyna blossom

[6] hey, now she’s engaged to ivan...

[7] she placed the blossom in her bouquet

[8] don’t eat the kalyna!

[9] hey, she’s now gone to marry ivan

[10] and winked at the boy...

mari poetry of goodness.

{chokecherries in the river valley}

Finally finishing my SSHRC grant does not actually entail a break for me, but it seems that the more schoolwork I have, the more inspiration I have to put things in here. Instead of reading articles on claiming indigeneity in Siberia, I'm flipping through a lovely book, The Great Bear -- an anthology of Finno-Ugric oral poetry, compiled by the Finnish oral historian & verbal art scholar Lauri Honko.

My current favourite piece is the following, in the Mari language -- it's very simple, it reminds me a little of Ukrainian folk songs (the kolomijky in particular) in its simple, 4-line structure, berry imagery & this particular sort of suggestive playfulness:

* * *

Törgom gonaj wokten shem shoptoret
wüdos konaj wozon shulalesh.
Mon denemok motor wozoldetkon
pelt-üj ganak onde shulalat.

In the stream your black currants
fall and melt away.
Fair one, if you sleep with me
you'll melt like butter.

* * *

Which reminds me that I want to write a post all about kalyna-berries & Ukrainian songs. Perhaps soon...

There's really a not a lot of English material on Finno-Ugric poetic forms, or really on many aspects of these cultures... so to be able to read Karelian and Udmurt and Mari and Khant songs all in one book, translated alongside their original forms, fills me with such delight I really don't know how to express it. Delicious delicious poems.

On another Mari note -- I found a blog (of a linguistics student) that provides a link where you can hear some Mari pop music by one Elvira Toktasheva... It's a bit cheesy-sounding, but it's traditional in that the pentatonic scale is used! But yes -- Mari is quite a lovely sounding language with its vowel harmony and plentiful post-alveolar fricatives... so that can be enjoyed. & it's thoroughly good to see an entire CD compilation exists in a language some feel is becoming increasingly threatened by Russian.

The whole political situation in Mari El in the last little while concerns me. You can read about it the basic situation here, & old news articles here. The Russian government is very very frightening.

car becomes part of landscape.

Yesterday I was at my aunt & uncle's for Thanksgiving dinner, & whilst I was wandering about the acreage I found my mother's old green Datsun -- her first car -- now seemed to be a fancy planter-box for three aspen poplars. With the engine long gone, & the hood removed, three swift-growing trees sprouted in the middle, anchoring the remnants of the car to the ground.

Grass grows tall around it, & lichens have taken up residence on the windshield, nibbling away at the rubber & the rest of this big green rock they've found. I'm sure small creatures are living amongst the tattered foam of the backseat... I know my uncle & aunt won't sacrifice the trees to remove the car, it's been there forever, since it was rendered undriveable by an accident thirty years ago. Slowly the trees will take over, the frame will rust away, swallow up the wheels in grass. It makes me think of part of aTalking Heads song, "(Nothing But) Flowers": This was a shopping mall / Now it's all covered in flowers / You got it, you got it... Once there were parking lots / Now it's a peaceful oasis / You got it, you got it... This was a Pizza Hut / now it's all covered in daisies / You got it, etc...

This trio of trees just reminds me of the earth's powers in reclaiming even the structures & constructions we see as so durable & eternal. As things fell apart nobody paid much attention...


Also, I have added a number of new pictures to my Flickr page, if you are interested in perusing...

photojournal.

This first picture was taken by Bryna, standing on my desk chair as I lie there, writing my SSHRC grant proposal mired in tornado-strewn paper piles & books. This epitomizes my life as of late. I am enjoying school -- moments of academic ecstasy do come. However, I have developed a terrible, exasperated loathing with the process of writing grant proposals. Basically bureaucratic hoops to jump through, written in language drained of life; two pages of stilted explanation worth $17000. & knowing that every autumn of my academic life will mean writing these things in hopes of convincing the ever-stingier, science-business-centric government that my research is worth something, too... I don't know. Maybe it will get less arduous. But now it just seems a little ridiculous. To spend this much time & energy writing these things when one wants to be out there doing fieldwork. Not writing sterile summaries about why their project is super-amazing, blah, etc. & that's when I escape the paper-stacks & go walking until I reach the river valley:


& explore the little trails leading to the sandy banks, past little ravines filled with the twisted branches of viburnum, little jewel-red kalyna-berries against bleached branches, blue sky & the tarnished coins of the trembling aspen, coating everything copper, whispering. I felt so cozy, & so secure, I wanted to bury myself in leaves & have a nap, lie there just listening to the leaves... Air smelling of apples decaying, the spice of wet wood. When I reached the water, there seemed to be no one around on my side of the river, so I sang quite loudly, right there on the bank where I took the photograph. It was very satisfying, wind smoothing the off-notes, covering the roughness of my voice.

Further down and across the bank, I heard a man whistle, his dog splashing into the water. A lone rower sculled down the centre of the river, people walked along the edge, gravel slipping under their feet. But no one ever noticed me, even turned my way. I felt delightfully invisible -- as if when I looked across the river, I looked into a future or a past, and I was unseen because I came from another time. Or perhaps the silt swallowed up the sound, the wind pushing my song back into the woods behind me. It's probably best that no one heard.

soup & a ten dollar bill.

{the elm in my front yard today}

{coppery path near the river this afternoon}

I think about soup a lot lately, my most cherished comfort food; this week has been ideal soup weather. Soup makes me think of my grandma, not only because of her borshch-making skills, but because of her mission to keep everyone contented & nourished. She'd always tell me I was far too thin, convinced that I never ate while I was at school (this is sometimes true). When I started university, every visit to her ended with a little bit of hroshej pressed into my palms -- she'd hobble over to her old grey leather purse & find maybe a five or a ten, a pile of coins, and push it into my hand, I'd feel her papery skin as she closed my fingers over the money. "Here," she'd say, "take this, go buy yourself some soup!"

Yesterday we buried my grandma's urn in the cemetery beside her husband, tucked her in under the rain & wet dirt & leaves. It's almost a year since she passed away, well, over ten months. But a year ago Thanksgiving was when she told us she wasn't going to be around much longer, that she missed her mother.

I wrote a letter in Ukrainian on behalf of my mother & I, & we placed it in the grave. I know that she knows how I feel, knows my love & gratitude, but it's so good to make it tangible, to leave that there with her remains, somehow. We left her with so many flowers the headstone was covered, and a donut. Usually boiled eggs & vodka are food for the deceased, but the last thing she ever asked to eat was a boston-cream-supreme donut from 'Horton's'. (That's what she called it... "Let's go to that Horton's place, it's not too bad," she'd say)

After the burial, my family decided to go to 'Horton's' too in her honour. We were cold & unravelly, & it was raining hard. As I was walking across the parking lot, following my sister, I looked suddenly, something purplish was lying in a puddle. I looked down & found a soggy ten dollar bill lying on the curb --

"Oh, you'll catch cold out here! Go in, have some soup!"

prosaic.

{leaves from the amur maple tree in quad, which is one of my favourite trees on campus}

This is just to say Happy October! Because it's October today & I'm not sure where the time went, again. Especially the weekend. Bryna & I were wondering if we are getting old, because of time getting unsettlingly speedy like this... it's a bit alarming.

Which reminds me, L'viv is having a milestone sort of birthday right about now. The city is 750 years old, as it was founded this weekend in 1256. & speaking of L'viv, Mandry is a Ukrainian band that wanders about in L'viv quite often, I hear. I enjoy them quite a bit, & you see, this little video-klip brings me cheer. & also distraction from my schoolwork. But mostly cheer. That's what I really wanted to post. So do watch & listen to 'Romansero pro nizhnu koroleva' , & appreciate the black & white old film footage & the accordion playing & the gleeful silly dancing.