we ourselves were the language.

little seed pods left on a plant, the river valley last week.

little burrs like barbed-wire stars. river valley, last week.

So, I met someone at the bookstore the other day. First I encountered her whilst flipping through an anthology of 'New European Poets' and seeing her name come up as both translator & author a number of times... Then when perusing the literary magazines, a whole article and interview with her! & thus I became acquainted with Miss Valzhyna Mort and her new book of poems, Factory of Tears.

So yes, Valhynia Martynava is a Belarusian poet and translator, now living in New York City, who plays the accordion when she is not writing poems that get stuck in my throat & melt into something that tastes halfway between borshch & tears. She writes about her grandmother, the political tumult of her home country, loneliness & lustiness, & perhaps most compelling to me, language. She writes in Belarusian -- a bold & significant move, for where she comes from, the language is drowned out by Russian, pushed into the cracks in the floors at the homes, whispered in the countryside by 'the peasants'. But she is passionate about reviving her language, still in the same danger of being silenced as it was under the Soviets, & there she is, reclaiming it, winning prizes for her readings all over Europe. (You should listen to this video of her reading even if you don't understand a word of any Slavic language -- pretend it's music. Her style is really powerful.)

And it's the lines from 'Belarusian I' that haunt me the most. In this poem written from the voice of her grandmother, she writes:

when we discovered we ourselves were the language
and our tongues were removed we started talking with our eyes
when our eyes were poked out we talked with our hands
when our hands were cut off we conversed with our toes
when we were shot in the legs we nodded our head for yes
and shook our heads for no and when they ate our heads alive
we crawled back into the bellies of our sleeping mothers
as if into bomb shelters
to be born again

(Valzhyna Mort, translated Joseph Cortese)

& it's such a tribute to how poetry persists, poetry in Eastern Europe is flourishing. Grown from a long line of dissident poets that used words as their only weapons, their new descendants in Ukraine and Belarus and Russia that have inherited this dedication to employing potency of poems in their new revolutions... & I've heard poetry readings in Kyiv can be standing-room-only, now. (Would that could happen here!)

But yes, Valzhyna. I love.

* * *

Also, I love this song: Fierce Little Lark by Shearwater, recorded live for a Daytrotter Session. That tremulous resonance in his voice is chilling & so lovely I could weep. Such sparse cryptic words, all choky in the throat:

we lay at the waterline... & fish with our fingers, & breathe in the night, so wild, so humble & storied... but all for a lie! all for a lie, oh all for a lie, i told you...

the fierce little lark has his eye upon you... the poplars are swinging so wild, & the wasp at the window, the spoon in your hand... & dog who is always watching... but all for a lie! all for a lie, oh all for a lie, i told you...