OLGA LIVSHIN

Excerpt from A Life Replaced

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TRANSLATING A LIFE

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            for O.M. and M.R.

 

Someone spread a blanket of wild buckwheat

over a meadow. Someone tucked puffball pillows

in each corner of the purple-green sheet.

It is summer everywhere, except war.

War, where it used to be home,

and now, war by government, here.

And what does it matter that the meadow

seduces the bees in pollen, or me in lines

of a poem, or that I hear perfectly good

Russian names for plants and translate them

into You-and-Me-ish? Take the tea mushroom,

the little fox mushrooms and piggies,

the early field-dweller, the mysterious

cheese-eater. These words are undocumented

here, and the country that sent them erases

every syllable with its crimes.

Take an under-birch-mushroom

anyway—it’s a choice edible,

birch bolete in your tongue, on

the tongue. The language for falling in love

with forests, and stories, and friends

does not care who’s killing whom.

Unfortunately, I care. And, sitting here

by a huge flowering bush, I see no refuge.

What languaged fantasy could stop us

from being murderous strangers? Would you

take a Russian mushroom name,

tuck it in your lapel for the brief banquet of life?

Does that translate anything else for you? Is this

how it works?

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A.A.

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***

I have no need for odes—their wordy battles—

Or elegies, those dainty parlor games.

To me, in poetry, everything should be out of line,

Not how these things are done.

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I wish you knew what garbage sprouts poems

And grows them without an ounce of shame,

Like yellow dandelions rising by a fence,

Like burdocks, weeds.

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An angry, “Stop!”, the smell of just-spilled tar,

Some mystery mold spreading on the wall—

Here comes my verse, already brazen, tender,

For you, for me, for joy.

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AKHMATOVA FOR OUR TIMES

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Pasting Akhmatova into Google Translate,

and clicking “ENGLISH,” one sees a plausible

quatrain, if somewhat misunderstood:

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“You have no idea what garbage

Poetry grows from, not knowing shame:

Like a yellow dandelion by the fence,

Like mugs and quinoa.”

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The poor neural network mistook violet burdocks

for mugs. Less mysteriously, purslane metastasized

into quinoa. Shame remained goddamn fucking shame.

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This Akhmatovaish is a recipe, its ingredients staples

available in every home today: mugs, quinoa; shame.

Combine, cry, and bake in your phone. You and I

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already burn in it, homunculi rage-crisped from the latest

assault on our sisters and brothers, the statements

of their skin, or accent, or sex. You will get

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no dandelions at the end—a few more gobs of shame.

Perhaps it’s not a recipe, and means just that

you can plant quinoa in a mug. Google it: you can

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make it grow. Use unwashed, unpolished seeds.