Yuri Andrukhovych | "(Dungeons)"

Linden-trees stand golden and soundless in their

time of blossoming.

"There were few dungeons here", - Neborak

said. Oh, the echo of former cellars

with the names that girls or wineries have,

"Dorotka", "Under the Angel", and the most ferocious one -

"Tatarnia" where eyes died first,

and light hid under an armpit,

into tongueless mouths!

This silence doesn't matter any more. This isn't even a

memorial. And this isn't a river that had been driven into pipes.

Though every one of us could have said:

"Linden-trees in their time of blossoming - withering stars.

Trams overcrowded with girls."

Translated from Ukrainian by Ostap Kin

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Another poem from Yuri Andrukhovych's cycle "Notes of Traveller in July" which appeared in his collections of poems Exotic Birds and Plants (Ivano-Frankivsk, 1997).

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Yuri Andrukhovych is Ukrainian poet, writer, essayist and translator. He lives in Ivano-Frankivsk.