A little girl

(Translation of Ihor Pavlyuk "ДІВЧИНКА")

The doorway leads to Granny.
A barefoot girl, she cries.
Wraith-wristed, in its waning
The fall is foiling eyes.

A rooster’s crow stops pouring
When coolness fills her soul.
“For whom do you feel sorry?”
The girl replies,
"For all…"

30 December 2009

(Original text below)

ДІВЧИНКА

Плаче дівчинка боса
На бабусин поріг.
Розчарована осінь
Клигає по дворі.

На душі, прохолода.
Навіть півень затих...
– А кого тобі шкода?
Каже дівчинка:
– Всіх...


MY DAYS
 
I compare my childhood summer days
To the poppy petals in a stubble field,
Burning right between the winding way
And the poppy bushes. Such a dream to feel.
 
Once awaken, through the window pane
I could see a beauty in the each of them,
How they smile and bend the stems in vain,
How they dance in youthful showers then.


They have fondled me the freckled boy
With a gentle warmness of my grandpa’s palms,
Wondered me about a tale and ploy
Waiting while the apple graying temples calm.


I was taught – believe in stars, Dnipro.
With a landing net they took me to a pool,
On a railway track reset my roles,
Left in timeless riddles happiness to cool.

Days are flying...
I have lost the count –
puppy flowers in the fields of rye.

As the more we are from youth to ground
our years gain tremendously in speed to fly.

July 19, 1985
















***

In the Mirror...
I can’t find in me a shadow to admire
and feel sorry for the golden mist.
On the other side
Ancestors are asleep and quiet,
Grey and thin – so much to find and miss.

I, apparently, was born somewhere in autumn,
For a hundred years shaking down the apple-words and wait –
Till I’ll fall in white short shades of lanterns,
birds,
the sinful angels,
and the fates.

[1985]































HORSES OF MY FATE

My grandfather and I
harnessed white horses –
Two winds were harnessed
with fate.
The ways
had chapped palms,
untaken yet courses.
I looked for myself,
afraid being late.

In the circle of friends,
in trust I had rested.
They gathered,
though
not everyone...
By the distance
my destiny was gracefully tested,
Like a scythe in the dew grass
had done.

When the white cherry plaits
were smoothly unbraided
Like a mane of a horse,
or rays of a morn,
Then my love came to me
softly telling – I made it,
when the star of the dawn
was finally born.

And she gave me a moon
for making a horseshoe,
for harness and saddle –
the silver of night.
Then she led by the bridle
my fate where I should
receive a new world,
unknown and half-right.

And I know, they live there
all new troubles and worries,
a new sadness and grief,
a new joy and bliss.
There is no way today
to spin back our stories,
we are destined to walk
where legends exist.

Roads are waiting for sure,
something warms us in nightfall.
You should feel what it is –
you hear its goodbye.
Two remarkable things –
the breathing of white foal
and the laugh of a child,
a bell in the sky.

Letter from Mother

The future – like a letter from my mother...
I am in hast to touch first words and lines
With youthful heart and hands. I'm greatly puzzled...
What in it was concealed from me by time?

Was it a lesson,
Or an earnest greeting?
A sentence given to the days outlived?
Shall I get wings, or reconcile my pity
With current life and what I might receive?

And my belief is only what is
Loyal –
My childhood, mother, and the farness too...

I carry for the gray-gray judgment
Royals –
The Sacred Love and Faithfulness.
I do.

October 1, 1985