Cover art by art collective La braccianti di Euripide.
Travel notes
It’s a metro line, like a branch, for people and others.
once back home, there were three lines, and there was always a shortage
Here it’s only one for their entire city,
From the river to paradise (almost terminus, Paradiso).
An elderly centaur, an old man from a painting by Ghirlandaio,
Nereids, let’s listen to rustling rope bracelets.
A carrier with a cat. A university student with it,
Someone with a physicist’s badge looking for the Fermi station.
A couple of banshees, they’re searching for Porta Susa.
A dry bag, means that selkie’s going to the coast,
Lots of backpacks, a soldier, a green-haired mermaid with a green bike.
I got the wrong train station, it looks like a ride back.
An elderly black terrier (the crowd murmurs – amore)
follows me, moving bodies of others
It’s a metro line, not, branch. Where’s it growth?
What will I be when we crawl to the surface?
***
The woman doesn’t want to wake up crazy,
She’s studying unusual food.
She looks through the noodles and sees something else –
skeins of wool, dry and hard, and she touches them.
She pours boiling water over and looks again:
a mixture of glass threads
and tentacles, jellyfish-like.
The woman looks into the water column, as if really diving into the water.
She smells something salty, may be, wind and waves are somewhere.
Far below the waves there is darkness, where there are no rays.
Algae, glassy and transparent, float on that water.
The fish-rod shines like lamps in summer.
It shines like that woman looking into her dark blue plate.
The way she stretches her hand,
The way she starts the song.
The woman eats slowly.
And the wind comes.
Eucalyptus
You say it’s completely unpleasant
To crawl through somebody’s wetlands.
Whether fish, insect, warm-blooded,
whether in metaphor or in some similar way,
Unpronounceable,
They’re not as good as the Real
With their pain, life and their deep purpose.
The epic of a schlimazel,
No sense, no language, no meaning,
Except smells, but also to them
the interpretation is needed.
But how to interpret
Without the right organs of speech.
It’s cold.
The clouds are coming in shoals
Herrings and sky.
How.
This.
Is.
Perfect?
***
Whose grass and stones are here, whose steppe, whose cracks are overgrown?
The tumbleweed samsara rolls off-road,
Over the chalky hills, onward, over scorched and thorny…
Not that of paths,
Nor that of the jets
The wind?
Whose grass is here, bring your face close, squint myopically,
Blue clouds, look, the breath of the coelacanths,
Don’t catch it, don’t weave it in. But the bones of the earth. But the poppies.
The great-grandmother’s snaky braids are flowing,
Where are the tangles and myths?
It’s hot.
Are they here
Or otherwise?
Whose land is this?
***
An itching blanket, lights and water. Earth.
It’s simple. And it can’t be vice versa.
The words, like someone’s shadow, lie upon.
The non-translation’s myth, misunderstanding.
But silence has apparently no silence.
Inside. And what is there can’t be covered,
With feathers, plants or memories, whatever.
The snow is naked. The world is naked and bare.
When we’re gone, remains only color
Unmuted,
insolent,
and unattractive
***
The leaves here are rotting.
There’s really nothing to love about.
It’s chilly and dank.
The blackberries are ripe third time a year.
You’ll pick them at night,
And only get your hands dirty.
If you meet anyone,
watch which way they tie their clothes.
Even if it’s to the left,
Too many
strangers
Are brought these days by the water.
Mariya Grabovska (Mariya Shcherbyna) is a Ukrainian poet from Kharkiv. She is an author of poetry books “I am your pain”, “After and in time” , “Troenochiye” (InsideTheThreeNights). Her poetry is a combination of philosophical worldview, creation of myths and picturesque imagery, a kind of symphonism, awareness in the world of literature, mythological and cultural traditions. Maria Grabovska is a laureate of B. Slutsky prize for the book ” Troenochiye” and member of the jury of the annual regional poetry contest “Young Slobozhanshchina”. Besides poetry, Maria is a scholar in the field of gender studies, Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, Associate Professor at East Ukrainian V. Dahl University, researcher at The Polytechnic University of Turin, and an artist, designer of beaded jewelry and art projects with semi-precious stones, participant and winner of international competitions and exhibitions in Ukraine, Germany, France, USA
