The God of Submission Loves Gentle Calves and Other Poems – Yuliya Musakovska

From “The God of Freedom” (Arrowsmith Press, 2024). Translated from Ukrainian by Olena Jennings and the author, Cover image: book cover.

NOT JUST ANOTHER DYSTOPIA

What happens next? Some will leave, some lose their lives.

The rest will stumble at the doorstep and somehow linger.

They will unlearn the difference between friends and enemies.

Because when everyone is made the same—why bother?

They will bring plastic flowers to cemeteries,

burn withered grass, battle their common sense.

How else would they survive in this devilish game,

where today you’re a hero and tomorrow, a loser?

They will put their memories to sleep, like their beloved pets,

will board up their windows and doors for the night.

Surely they lived like that earlier, biting their lips, drawing blood,

with enough food and comfort, although no lofty ideas.

To survive in any circumstances you need the talent

to chase away thoughts, dangerous like underground waters.

Perhaps they will share with their grandchildren someday

how it feels to turn back when you have one step to freedom.

They will cherish their sorrows in their spacious kitchens,

along with strategies of peaceful resistance, spiritual defense.

But the one with a hole in her chest will keep sharpening her knife.

The one who held the border with bare hands

will count his bullets.

FEAR

Fear,

that encircles your throat

with an iron hoop,

does not define you.

Fear,

that pierces the chest

with a red-hot rod,

brands

both cheeks,

does not define you.

Fear is like the typhus

that father brought

home from the war

and before his death,

spread it to all his children.

Fear is like the hair

that grows out,

after you shave your head,

not curly anymore.

Fear is like a language

that they

forced you to speak,

feeding you

moldy bread

and spoiled meat;

pieces of earth,

fertilized with bone meal.

Fear is like a stranger,

who approaches you,

spraying spit.

Fear is like a torn latex glove,

a protective mask,

which fell from your face in a crowd.

Fear is safety,

which devours freedom

with a pretty mouth.

Don’t ask what fear can do to you–

ask what you can do to fear.

So that it does not define you.

A JOB

There is such a job, to survive at all costs.

A man wakes up in the morning,

splashes his face with water.

And smearing soap foam across his chin,

shaves with a straight razor—

sharpening it on his belt.

His movements, confident and precise,

as if he mows the grass with a spit

though he had never mowed it.

Perhaps he even trims his mustache.

He turns on the radio

and does his morning exercises.

Then he puts on his clothes,

perhaps even deciding

which shirt he should choose —

this brown one or the other, the plaid.

Perhaps even puts on a tie.

Carefully ties his shoes,

Leaves the house,

without slamming the door behind him—

a decent neighbour,

a law-abiding citizen

from an apartment on the ground floor

in a nice area—

the former owners disappeared somewhere.

He walks, everything is according to schedule:

at one, he beats a student’s kidneys,

at two, breaks a girl’s, a protester’s spine,

at three, drowns a child in a waste pit,

at six, he returns home for dinner.

THE LILY OF DARKNESS

In place of a mouth the executioner has a lily,

white, suffocating, and endless.

He turns around and I see the darkness

of his throat.

A rollercoaster ride on which

I choke on vomit.

I held this lily by the stem,

the executioner by the throat.

I dug the earth up with my bare hands,

to pull up all the roots,

the snake’s lair.

But it slithered out between my fingers.

It always

slithers away at the last second,

the darkest

before dawn,

so that tomorrow it can

uncurl again

beneath the cradle.

PERHAPS YOU DIDN’T

This will never happen to me,

she says, ironing her dress, white like a blank page.

All these women—each has her own truth.

Perhaps they prayed carelessly, couldn’t keep the hearth,

didn’t put a mandragora root under their bed,

perhaps they just couldn’t manage it.

It’s just me imagining, I mustn’t take it to heart,

she ponders, sweeping the floor scattered with broken dishes,

her certainty, suddenly so fragile.

My loved one—it’s not so easy for him,

my loved one has troubles at work,

my loved one’s mood is ruined,

my loved one struggles with an untamed hunger,

the search for an easy target—

a stuffed doll with round button eyes.

You were busy making yourself beautiful,

neglecting housework.

Perhaps you weren’t considerate enough,

grew yourself a crown; perhaps you have gone too far,

Swayed the foundation of this cozy world.

A neighbor’s baby is crying behind the wall,

reminding you of what is crucial.

Annoyingly, only minutes of tardiness are being born.

Don’t air your dirty linen in public,

don’t talk of nasty things at the table,

on Sunday morning, on a hard day’s night, on holiday or at lent.

When she comes to me with her swollen lip,

with a carefully masked blue bird on her temple,

I don’t tell her: perhaps you didn’t. Instead, for the both of us

I tell her: turn the page, darling, just turn the page.

THE GOD OF SUBMISSION