The One
and maybe living on Isla Negra on a white yacht
the air shatters, a chasm within a chasm
and the one who loved me and the one who doesn’t anymore
and the one who will sue me over mutual property
and the one who liked music and the one who stifled my muse
and the one who has a gaze of unripe corn
and the one who wanted me and the one who betrayed me
and the one who got up and smoked all night
and the one who said she wasn’t sure and avoided matrimony
and the one who wore a uniform and then fox fur
and the one who pleased me and the one who held me
and the one who will now take the no 8 express tram
and the one on whose lips the milk has not yet dried
and the one who I saw in Greenwich Village
and the one I saw in Soho
and the one who said she’d come and never made it to Belgrade
and the one who I left like a coin in Granada
and the one who had an apartment but was unlucky
and said she was hopeful but not often
and the one who wrote poems and the one who sang in a bar
and the one who wasn’t at all right for me
and the one who listened to Cohen and the other who liked films
and the one who yelled: you’ll crawl back to me on your knees
and the one who forgot about me and the one who already died
and the one who was like honey and then turned rotten
and it’s possible in an old folks’ home or maybe in poems
to have a grave before you and the ground opening beneath your feet
and for the one who loved you once and for the one who planted flowers
and for the one who looked at you: what would her kids be like?
and for the one who asked you and for the one who rejected you
and for the one who held your book in her lap
and what about the one that you loved—you upset her
and you told someone that you were dying of desire
and you who in rain or in the sounds in snow in lilac scents
when your body was injected with a drip of love’s glucose
you thought: the end, you reached bottom
who will be the one who is on your mind?
In Paris
if I could take you to Paris
I would as be content as a mouse in hay
I would reward you with the streets and the Champs-Élysées
Paris can sweep you off your feet
land of restaurants la-la-la
don’t forget your umbrella: in Paris it’s always raining
and so my plane takes off from JFK for Paris
there is no trace of the Hotel Reikartz here
Monsieur Jacques Madame Gi-Gi
and everything here is toujours and a jour
I fan my tail out like a courting peacock
a week in Paris sitting together in a café
reading poems analyzing the metaphors and stanzas
here is García Márquez and here is Neruda
kissing chapped lips is happiness
buying Turkish plums at the market
“the lost generation” sighs Gertrude
being jealous of the looks the server throws your way
wrapping you in an embrace, safeguarding sleep
sharing life with you and an orange
opening the windows grabbing the slipping comforter
asking: what time is your plane?
and asking: are you crying?
keeping still half the day and wandering through Paris the other half
knowing: you will leave our Paris today
it somehow doesn’t happen
I have one more day—due to a mix-up with the tickets
and when I order a cup of coffee
Pablo smiles at me
The Miner
my grandfather on my mother’s side was Vasyl Kardynal,
a miner in Kryvyi Rih—
he didn’t like communism, which festered in the province
along with the poet and priest Ernesto Cardenal with whom in fact
he shared the Kardynal name
grandfather didn’t like the revolution either: so he mined ore
was a soldier, married Anna Pohribna
he didn’t write poems, so any other similarity to Ernesto disappeared—
like a bird in flight
grandfather liked his dog with blue eyes—the fish from Dzurynka—
his lungs were full of ore dust—sounded like bass bellows
he knew short parts of the Bible by heart
in the kitchen he started a fire with a bunch
of straw—which he hauled inside on an old torn tarp
and like a former soldier he didn’t like to watch war movies
when it snowed he looked at the world from the window of the vertep
that made him feel free
grandfather also said that he was called to study at the seminary
he had a voice like a dove in flight and golden
and so he would have journeyed with Christ from Judea to Samaria
between wine and hunger
but he was a miner—he would go blind into the gallery of the mine
he said that a miner dies in his sleep—in other words is silent
and in death he lies with golden ore in the hearse
before it the hills and valleys
I know that he wrote something—scribbled things down in his notebooks
and what he didn’t tell me about, I now know
when I fly to green Nicaragua in February
maybe I can talk to Cardenal about it
from Paper Bridge
Vasyl Makhno
translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings
Read the original in Ukrainian
Listen to the original read by the poet:
In order to create a strong voice in this translation, I started with Vasyl Makhno’s poem “The One.” As Susan Bernofsky writes, “voice is the crux of all translating.” The repetition of the words “and the one” creates a rhythm that guided me through the poem. First, I let it guide me as I translated the poem without revision and without the benefit of dictionaries and thesauruses. Second, I looked up the words of whose meaning I wasn’t certain. Third, I read the poem aloud to make sure that everything flowed and sounded like a piece that could have been written in English.
The voice of the poem is that of a confident traveler. In “The One,” we are in Isla Negra in Chile. In another poem in this selection, “In Paris,” we have a dreamlike Parisian atmosphere. The poem, “The Miner,” takes place in a Ukrainian landscape, but Ernesto Cardenal, a Nicaraguan priest and poet, is also woven in. This is because Makhno travels extensively and this poem was written before his trip to Nicaragua, where he actually had the opportunity to cross paths with Cardenal. Makhno’s poetry resembles activism in how it reaches around the world, making Makhno more than a Ukrainian poet. Makhno was intrigued by a name so similar to his grandfather’s, Vasyl Kardynal, and Cardenal’s unique biography. It was thus that the poem brought together disparate images, like fate. Makhno’s grandfather was a miner and that’s where the title comes from.
I was careful not to make the voice in the poem my voice. I considered not only the individual poem I was translating, but also all the poems in the collection so that I could create a reflection of Makhno’s voice. His voice is characterized by confidence and so I strived to recreate that in the reflection.
A mirror is an important image in defining the process of translation. As poet and translator Don Mee Choi states, “It’s only natural that the translation is conducted in the mirror, for it is the site of various reflections, a site where things are already mirrored, re-represented.” Though they may not be perfect likenesses, these translations of poems by Vasyl Makhno are reflections of a strong and worldly poetic voice.
The voice of the poem is that of a confident traveler. In “The One,” we are in Isla Negra in Chile. In another poem in this selection, “In Paris,” we have a dreamlike Parisian atmosphere. The poem, “The Miner,” takes place in a Ukrainian landscape, but Ernesto Cardenal, a Nicaraguan priest and poet, is also woven in. This is because Makhno travels extensively and this poem was written before his trip to Nicaragua, where he actually had the opportunity to cross paths with Cardenal. Makhno’s poetry resembles activism in how it reaches around the world, making Makhno more than a Ukrainian poet. Makhno was intrigued by a name so similar to his grandfather’s, Vasyl Kardynal, and Cardenal’s unique biography. It was thus that the poem brought together disparate images, like fate. Makhno’s grandfather was a miner and that’s where the title comes from.
I was careful not to make the voice in the poem my voice. I considered not only the individual poem I was translating, but also all the poems in the collection so that I could create a reflection of Makhno’s voice. His voice is characterized by confidence and so I strived to recreate that in the reflection.
A mirror is an important image in defining the process of translation. As poet and translator Don Mee Choi states, “It’s only natural that the translation is conducted in the mirror, for it is the site of various reflections, a site where things are already mirrored, re-represented.” Though they may not be perfect likenesses, these translations of poems by Vasyl Makhno are reflections of a strong and worldly poetic voice.
Vasyl Makhno is a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, essayist, and translator. He is the author of thirteen collections of poetry and most recently the book of selected poems Poet, the Ocean, and Fish (Folio, 2019). He has also published a book of short stories, The House in Baiting Hollow (Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva: 2015), a novel, The Eternal Calendar (Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva: 2019), and four books of essays, The Gertrude Stein Memorial Cultural and Recreation Park (Krytyka, 2006), Horn of Plenty (Krytyka, 2011), Suburbs and Borderland (Yakaboo Publishing, 2019), and Biking along the Ocean (Yakaboo Publishing, 2020). Makhno’s works have been widely translated into many languages; his books have been published in Germany, Israel, Poland, Romania, Serbia and the US. His poems and essays appeared in English in Absinthe, Agni, Consequences, Post Road, Poetry International, and others. Two poetry collections, Thread and Other New York Poems (Spuyten Duyvil, 2009) and Winter Letters (Spuyten Duyvil, 2011), were published in English translation. He is the recipient of Kovaliv Fund Prize (2008), Serbia’s International Povele Morave Prize in Poetry (2013), the BBC Book of the Year Award (2015), and International Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize “Encounter” (2020). Makhno currently lives with his family in New York City.
Olena Jennings is the author of the poetry collection Songs from an Apartment (Underground Books, 2017) and the chapbook Memory Project (Underground Books, 2017). Her translation from the Ukrainian of Iryna Shuvalova’s poetry collection Pray to the Empty Wells, in collaboration with the author, was released in 2019 by Lost Horse Press. Her translation, together with Oksana Lutsyshyna, of Artem Chekh’s Absolute Zero was published by Glagoslav in 2020. Her novel Temporary Shelter is forthcoming from Červená Barva Press. She is the founder and curator of the Poets of Queens reading series.
