***
Amid voicing
and amid silence
among the trees and the insects
and a fearsome metal seagull.
Amid
heavy gloom
and dead light
in the sour milk of dawn
in the labyrinth of the trenches
with the Minotaur of war.
Amid charred trees
amid roads
shattered
like a pair of glasses
dropped on the ground
amid the ghosts
of the living and the dead.
Amid the heat
rising from weapons
amid the music
of machine gun rounds
amid the bass
of loaded artillery.
It appears,
like morning mist
like acne on a teenager’s cheeks
like wrinkles
like cracks in old houses
like ladders in nylon tights:
A smile of silence
memories of a lost warmth
a poem.
Translated by Helena Kernan from: Maksym Krvytsov, Вірші з бійниці: Поезії (Nash Format, 2024), pp. 38–39.
