Poems
Translated by Uilleam Blacker

(The poem below was written in response to the death, in a Russian air strike, of the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina)

I sit here like a dog and don’t understand death
I don’t get it I don’t follow
I can’t get my head around it
with my dog’s brains
here is a person

and now only her clothes remain her boots
the left sole slightly more worn on the inside
the torn edge of the coat pocket sewn up
by a hand that
suddenly no longer knows how to sew
or write or hold a knife or fork or stroke
her son’s head or click her fingers
impatiently
can we learn all this again somewhere after the end

receipts in a handbag – from the drycleaners the café
some crumbs from a pastry
...