Poetry

Laws Are Mutating . . .

by  Vanechka
translated by Yana Kane
A doorway in a stone wall, looking out on to a field

Laws are mutating. Protests are muted.
United ayes sneer at fractious nays.
Brained by vulgarity, befogged and mired,
The nation’s keeping mum
Stuck in its ways.
Brick pressed to brick, stone laid on stone,
In all directions—our sky is blocked.
Muttering “screw it,” shrugging “who gives a damn?”
The nation’s once again
Spineless and stuck.
Beloved brothers, beloved neighbors,
We’ve come to shove you into the ground.
Forward, march, soldiers! Come back—cold corpses.
Kinless, the nation’s
Hunkering down.
Let’s tune the radio, add TV channels,
Ten fun new shows, all night, all day.
Some for the heartless, some for the brainless.
The nation laps it up.
Everything’s OK.

Translation from the Russian
Edited by Bruce Esrig


Vanechka is the pen name of Anastasia Brovarets, an actor, poet, and musician. She works at the TeNer Music Theater in Moscow and is a graduate of the music education program at the Moscow Institute of Pedagogy.


Yana Kane came to the United States as a refugee from the Soviet Union. She holds an MFA in creative writing / literary translation from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a PhD in statistics from Cornell University. She is grateful to Bruce Esrig for editing her English texts.

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