Translated by Max Nemtsov

That is, even if I pine I pine for this only, not just a trolley or a tram but the specific route number, that view of that street that disappeared so long ago that I had n’t been born yet but we were alive. There are no countries. There are no motherlands. There are no cities. There are no so-called (e)rahs. As there’s no choice in viewing photos or postcards. All happy photos look exactly like the unhappy ones. They are the ones I pine for. That smell. That wood. That beast. That person. That taste. That word. That tone. That outline of that shadow of that building. That corner of the street and the alley. That silhouette that remains after a tenue. That way of holding your hand. That size of a child’s dress. That color that wanders among the vineyards that cling to the building wall. That angle of the hunched back. That look. That untrodden way with no turns necessary in some other cases. That is why I don’t look back yet I give a start as I meet something similar.

June 2, 2024

Hurt is a herb nice to look at it pricks it cuts it stubbornly pushes out of a body out of skin drenched in the outer water it grows from the earth it’ll go into the earth with its blood its pain its skin Tearing the air with barbs in shreds of air in ground down puffs in shapes juicy with sweat in prickly edges on tearful shores in briny tears petrified on exit vitrified on exit shrapnel wounds not tears in the draining last air in the flesh not in spirit the flesh is not for a floorer not for a pleaser the flesh lies without moving the hurt ripples the little herb nosky or onesky Eat my little fishie eat my little kitty our mother will have us in different time

June 4, 2024

Look at an animal suffering. Look at a plant suffering. Even a stone lies devastated. Rivers hawk blood and mud. Waters burst gustily, and the shore has turned away, shrinking into itself. So now you are spacious and full, or female you are, or. You may mark it with a word, a color, a sound. You may find something optimistic or you may blaze with righteous anger, or. The main thing is that you find the means to transfer this into the other. You may well write a po me on this, a short story or a short novel. Not to mention the long one. Whatever gives more and sooner satisfac tion of knowing that you’re doing a good deed and doing it good, and you even have joy of a publication, a collection, a release. I wish you could put it closer to the heart. I wish you put it close to the he art yourself but where then a word, a color, a sound come, the overwhelming will overweigh. But. Look at. Leaves are dying, devoid of metaphors, color, sound, a tree falls as if poleaxed or is squeezed into its skeleton. A beast dies suffering. The world has no alternatives. Although that like any nothing is not a way out. Neither a way in. The one not casting a net into murky waters that don’t re flect anyone from the start. Otherwise, how to be human so that to be not yet human.

June 9, 2024

To Ira Yevsa and her sister Ira Kravchenko

A mite of a mute paradise some flowers in pots on a calm ground by the gate. So that (so and so, listed) be alive, lived and the smell of the sky bottom in the eye imagination with a black of a thread. Namely Temporary Nominally Necessarily Naturally every flower in a foreign yard of a refugee will turn up in paradise in order only to drop out of there into the yard of a new. Refugee. And the potter will weep finally.