Serhiy Zhadan "Istoriya kultury pochatku stolittya" (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2003)*
Serhiy Zhadan's collection of verses "History of Culture at the Turn of This Century" is one of my favorite. The poems are written in a way as though they were a script if not for film, than at least for a short film. Andriy Bondar mentions this fact in his annotation to the book: "Zhadan is a cinematographic poet. All his poems appear to be a sort of an episode from American movie." The book is already available in German (Surhkamp, 2005; translated by Claudia Dathe), Polish (Biuro Literackie, 2005; translated by Bohdan Zadura), and Russian (KOLONNA Publications, ARGO-RISK, 2003; translated by Igor Sid). Few months ago, while doing the Internet surfing, I came across an information that Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps reveiced a grant to translate this collection of poems. Some poems are already available online.
History of Culture at the Turn of This Century
You will reply today, touching warm letters,
leafing through them in the dark, confusing vowels with consonants,
like a typewriter in an old Warsaw office.
The heavy honeycombs
glisten with gold from which language is spun.
Don’t stop, just write,
type over the empty white space, stamp through the black silent trail.
No one will return from ramblings through the long night,
and forgotten snails will die on wet grass.
Central Europe lies under tissue white snow.
I always believed in the lazy movements of Gypsies,
not everyone has inherited this worn coin.
If you look at their passports,
which smell of mustard and saffron,
if you hear their worn-out accordions,
which reek of leather and Arabic spices –
you’d hear them say that when you leave – no matter where you go –
you only create more distance and will never be any closer than you are now;
when the songs of old gramophones die,
a residue seeps out
like tomatoes
from damaged cans.
The overburdened heart of the epoch bursts every morning,
but not behind these doors, not in cities burnt by the sun.
Time passes, but it passes so near that if you
look closely, you can see its heavy warp,
and you whisper overheard sentences
and want someone someday to recognize your voice and say –
this is how the era began,
this is how it turned – awkward, heavy like a munitions truck,
leaving behind dead planets and burnt-out transmitters,
scattering wild ducks in the pond,
that fly off and call louder
than the truckers,
god,
barges.
When choosing your course of studies you should find out
among other things –
if the culture at the turn of this century
has already pressed itself into the veins of your slow arm,
rooted itself in the whorls of your thick hair,
carelessly blown by the wind,
and tousled by fingers
like streams of warm water in a basin,
like colored clay beads over cups and ashtrays,
like a vast autumn sky
over a cornfield.
*
History of Culture at the Turn of This Century
You will reply today, touching warm letters,
leafing through them in the dark, confusing vowels with consonants,
like a typewriter in an old Warsaw office.
The heavy honeycombs
glisten with gold from which language is spun.
Don’t stop, just write,
type over the empty white space, stamp through the black silent trail.
No one will return from ramblings through the long night,
and forgotten snails will die on wet grass.
Central Europe lies under tissue white snow.
I always believed in the lazy movements of Gypsies,
not everyone has inherited this worn coin.
If you look at their passports,
which smell of mustard and saffron,
if you hear their worn-out accordions,
which reek of leather and Arabic spices –
you’d hear them say that when you leave – no matter where you go –
you only create more distance and will never be any closer than you are now;
when the songs of old gramophones die,
a residue seeps out
like tomatoes
from damaged cans.
The overburdened heart of the epoch bursts every morning,
but not behind these doors, not in cities burnt by the sun.
Time passes, but it passes so near that if you
look closely, you can see its heavy warp,
and you whisper overheard sentences
and want someone someday to recognize your voice and say –
this is how the era began,
this is how it turned – awkward, heavy like a munitions truck,
leaving behind dead planets and burnt-out transmitters,
scattering wild ducks in the pond,
that fly off and call louder
than the truckers,
god,
barges.
When choosing your course of studies you should find out
among other things –
if the culture at the turn of this century
has already pressed itself into the veins of your slow arm,
rooted itself in the whorls of your thick hair,
carelessly blown by the wind,
and tousled by fingers
like streams of warm water in a basin,
like colored clay beads over cups and ashtrays,
like a vast autumn sky
over a cornfield.
Translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps
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