Two Poems by Polina Barskova

Translated by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky

From Mad Vatslav’s Diary

I was a coal-miner, water

Poured over my gray hair, my eyelashes.
My sister, alive and laughing,
Shepherded such glorious cows!

I was a soldier, and afraid of living
I did my best to die–but did not manage to stumble
Upon any bad luck. The tsar’s own daughter
Visited my cabin and gave me a magic rope.

I was a slave. My master’s wife
Adored us, the dark, forbidden Slavs.
The green sunrise was the strangest.
In sorrow I danced, swaying, trembling, on wooden porches.

Manuscript Found by Natasha Rostova During the Fire

I will try to live on earth without you.

I will try to live on earth without you.

I will become any object,
I don’t care what—
I will be this speeding train.
This smoke
or a beautiful gay man laughing in the front seat.

A human body is defenseless
on earth.

It’s a piece of fire-wood.
Ocean water hits it.
Lenin puts it on his official shoulder.

And therefore, in order not to suffer, a human spirit
lives
inside the wind and inside the wood and inside the shoulder of a great dictator.

But I will not be water. I will not be a fire.

I will be an eyelash.
A sponge washing your neck-hairs.
Or a verb, an adjective, I will become. Such a word

slightly lights your cheek.
What happened? Nothing.
Something visited? Nothing.

What was there you cannot whisper.
No smoke without fire, they whisper.
I will be a handful of smoke
over this lost city of Moscow.

I will console any man,
I will sleep with any man,
under the army’s traveling horse carriages.

Born in St. Petersburg, Polina Barskova is a contemporary Russian poet, author of many acclaimed books of verse, including “Euridis and Orphica.”

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, Ukraine and currently lives in San Diego.

Katie Farris is the author of BOYSGIRLS (Marick Press) and co-editor of Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poets (Tupelo Press). She teaches in the MFA Program at SDSU.