Two Russian Poems from Berlin

“Pale blue and a flag inside, can’t see which one . . .”

Pale blue and a flag inside, can’t see which one.
Living people, two, chase a ball. A live one
In a cook’s apron stretched across his belly,
Holds a white cigarette by the café’s back door.

A woman, glasses perched upon her living nose.
Living dogs are straining at the leash.
Airy summer shirts, light jackets,
As expected of the living, billow in the wind.
Nothing gives away the place where all this is going down.

Here no one lies facedown in water, no one
Inexplicably refuses, in
Violation of all the rules of decency,
To get up, revive, rejoin the world of the living.

Even the ball, look, it doesn’t lie, it bounces.

May 24, 2022

“While we slept, we bombed Kharkiv . . .”

While we slept, we bombed Kharkiv

Afterward, a little later, the kettle with its whistle
And the old house’s tree trunks trunking full of sun
And throwing wide the summer shutters
Sweet kisses tears and oh the dawn, the dawn

And Kharkiv breathed its last in blackest smoke

While we ate, we bombed Lviv
And after entered
The wrinkled water, elders first
In the smoke of barbecues
Clanged dragonflies

Afterward we sang in chorus of how the banks
Were blanketed with hundreds of shot-down dead

And so it went, waddling like a duck,
A morning in July.

July 9, 2022

Translations from the Russian