Originally in Reply to Matt's Comment on my Previous Entry, Thought Up While Being Domestic
The West, the West, the West. Big and attractive, like a large magnet. The West! But the East screams quietly and patiently in my ears - come, come to me, not because life is grander here or better here, but because you should live like plastic diamonds before life turns to stone.
One day far back I lost my face in stone...
(Andijewska)
Landscapes pass through you
on your right groves cast shadows over you
on your left you are soaked
with cold moonlight
fields draw you toward the horizon
the horizontal streets and canals
the vertical heights and lights
run through you
you are divided by everything
you are borrowed by everything you love
(Boychuk)
Wrong! All you almost Tennysons are as wrong as Blake! I know this is an equal exchange, a culture-for-culture trade, but I am raping and looting history and folk, just as history books of a sort unknown in this land say my favourite hero did to then unrecognised masses. Ukraine is a mirror, in which I can see the undesirables of my image-self and change them, so that when I am gone, the mirror is once again left to reflect everything old and similar, but I am not simply living my lovely life outside of the walls - I am newer and more beautiful. But mostly in words, and occasionally in images.
Everyone should, as Boychuk says, "disfigure [ones] mirror," be it here or there or elsewhere, while life lives itself on the streets and under the lights.
The picture may be worth a thousand words, but what if they are mirror pictures? What if they only serve to make permanent the fleeting bite you sneak from someone else's cake?
I think I fall in with love words that are perhaps not as cruel as sharply severe. Life is too often dulled in words. Likely this dullness grows out of a joy of simplicity or the beauty of the prosaic, but I don't believe it. I think it is a selfish sense of secrecy that one only wants to recongise when one lives a sharp life. Well, the best part of being by myself is the ability to love my selfishness.
I've fashioned a cage of words for you
to lock you in like a finch.
I've woven a translucent net of hints
to catch you and forget you.
When I playfully fed you
from my palm with crumbs of conjectures -
how could I have known that my words
have slaved* in your captivity since long ago?
Do not think I have changed since you knew me. I am just revelling for a moment, and my secret self is happily shouting that while I was perhaps never foreign, and it perhaps always was, we two are now on equal terms.
My last entry precluded my (perhaps hidden until now) tendency toward the domestic; today I did my shopping first. Life turns and churns, I suppose.
Oh, and I suppose it's time for me to post my address for all the lovelies who want to send me pieces of their hearts to put in a box while I am here. (Don't worry, it's a sturdy box.)
My address is:
vul. Reytarska 7-B, kv. 13
Kiev, Ukraine 01034
(вул. Рейтарська 7-Б, кв. № 13
Кіїв, Україна 01034)
My phone is:
(380-44) 464-04-81
The new e-mail is:
mraypsu@yahoo.com
and the IM is the same.
And as I leave, I will once again use the words of another to describe my first three weeks here - perhaps you will think me less lost than in my last several words?
The people are beautiful.
The land is like a fairy-tale.
Nowhere will you find a more beautiful sun.
Up to my heart
I sank tenaciously into the earth.
It sturdily holds me
And I want to be strong,
And I want so to love,
So that even an insensible stone
Would want to come alive
And live!
Arise, stone souls,
Open your hearts and mind
so that future generations
Can't say of you,
"They were not of this earth..."
Well, goodbye with all my saccharine sentiment, and in case you missed the oh-so-subtle suggestion, (I never pick a poem, especially Symonenko, for no reason...) reread the end of the poem and understand the full consequences of not visiting!
*My one-word edit to Naydan's translation - I'm not sure whether its serves the poem better or me, but I hope he'll forgive me. Anyway, here's to my first Ukrainian translation!
One day far back I lost my face in stone...
(Andijewska)
Landscapes pass through you
on your right groves cast shadows over you
on your left you are soaked
with cold moonlight
fields draw you toward the horizon
the horizontal streets and canals
the vertical heights and lights
run through you
you are divided by everything
you are borrowed by everything you love
(Boychuk)
Wrong! All you almost Tennysons are as wrong as Blake! I know this is an equal exchange, a culture-for-culture trade, but I am raping and looting history and folk, just as history books of a sort unknown in this land say my favourite hero did to then unrecognised masses. Ukraine is a mirror, in which I can see the undesirables of my image-self and change them, so that when I am gone, the mirror is once again left to reflect everything old and similar, but I am not simply living my lovely life outside of the walls - I am newer and more beautiful. But mostly in words, and occasionally in images.
Everyone should, as Boychuk says, "disfigure [ones] mirror," be it here or there or elsewhere, while life lives itself on the streets and under the lights.
The picture may be worth a thousand words, but what if they are mirror pictures? What if they only serve to make permanent the fleeting bite you sneak from someone else's cake?
I think I fall in with love words that are perhaps not as cruel as sharply severe. Life is too often dulled in words. Likely this dullness grows out of a joy of simplicity or the beauty of the prosaic, but I don't believe it. I think it is a selfish sense of secrecy that one only wants to recongise when one lives a sharp life. Well, the best part of being by myself is the ability to love my selfishness.
I've fashioned a cage of words for you
to lock you in like a finch.
I've woven a translucent net of hints
to catch you and forget you.
When I playfully fed you
from my palm with crumbs of conjectures -
how could I have known that my words
have slaved* in your captivity since long ago?
Do not think I have changed since you knew me. I am just revelling for a moment, and my secret self is happily shouting that while I was perhaps never foreign, and it perhaps always was, we two are now on equal terms.
My last entry precluded my (perhaps hidden until now) tendency toward the domestic; today I did my shopping first. Life turns and churns, I suppose.
Oh, and I suppose it's time for me to post my address for all the lovelies who want to send me pieces of their hearts to put in a box while I am here. (Don't worry, it's a sturdy box.)
My address is:
vul. Reytarska 7-B, kv. 13
Kiev, Ukraine 01034
(вул. Рейтарська 7-Б, кв. № 13
Кіїв, Україна 01034)
My phone is:
(380-44) 464-04-81
The new e-mail is:
mraypsu@yahoo.com
and the IM is the same.
And as I leave, I will once again use the words of another to describe my first three weeks here - perhaps you will think me less lost than in my last several words?
The people are beautiful.
The land is like a fairy-tale.
Nowhere will you find a more beautiful sun.
Up to my heart
I sank tenaciously into the earth.
It sturdily holds me
And I want to be strong,
And I want so to love,
So that even an insensible stone
Would want to come alive
And live!
Arise, stone souls,
Open your hearts and mind
so that future generations
Can't say of you,
"They were not of this earth..."
Well, goodbye with all my saccharine sentiment, and in case you missed the oh-so-subtle suggestion, (I never pick a poem, especially Symonenko, for no reason...) reread the end of the poem and understand the full consequences of not visiting!
*My one-word edit to Naydan's translation - I'm not sure whether its serves the poem better or me, but I hope he'll forgive me. Anyway, here's to my first Ukrainian translation!