This Translation Tuesday, we bring to you four poems by the poet and artist Gena Gruz in Aaron Poochigian’s translation. Reflecting on the Bulldozer Exhibition of 1974—where Soviet authorities sent literal bulldozers to destroy the art pieces of an unofficial art exhibition held by a group of avant-garde artists—Gruz’s poems respond to a crucial juncture in the history of modern Russian art. Be it the “budding façade” of marching girls or a “goldfish in fishnet negligee,” her poems, terse as they are, bristle with the power to invoke a surreal atmosphere in which a new social world is on the verge of being born, and a new language articulated. 

Girls in 1981 

girls are marching
moving en masse in formation
government provisions
are rearing outspoken heroines
their legs are covered with the down of pre-pubescence
their toenails are covered in polish the color of poppies
they in sailor suits
budding façade 

Tree

A tree is bowing to a locomotive
Shovel me into the furnace instead of coal
Wrapped like herring in newspaper
It will be burnt for power
It won’t become a coffin
It won’t become a fence
won’t see a girl coming home from school READ MORE…