'Six Poems' translated by Oksana Maksymchuk

Translated from the Russian by Oksana Maksymchuk

Max Rosochinsky writes: I was born and raised in Crimea, in a Russian-speaking family, where Ukrainian – which would have been my mother tongue under slightly different historical circumstances – had long been repressed for the sake of career advancement within the Soviet system. Thanks to my wife and translator Oksana Maksymchuk, I learned Ukrainian in Lviv and began speaking it again – somewhat paradoxically ‘adopting’ it as my native language. I stopped writing in Russian soon after the annexation of Crimea, experiencing a whole spectrum of emotions: from a feeling of rage and a sense of muteness grounded in an inability to continue writing in the language of an enemy that had once been my own, to reflections about intended audience, cultural context, poetic identity, and the literary tradition into which Russian-language writing automatically gets inscribed. A language is never entirely neutral; it carries within it a charge of historical and ideological meanings; it has a history and a criminal record. To its speakers and writers, privileges accrue, as do duties and burdens.

The cycle is titled Tapestry. It is inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Norman invasion of England. The association is not accidental: writing in the language of the invaders while identifying with the invaded recalls the strange perspective embedded in that work. Tapestry reflects on techne, on the craft of arrangement and composition, but it also becomes a metaphor for history itself – commissioned, cinematic, shaped by those who may resist or even detest what has happened, yet have no choice but to recount it. Truth itself may be unattainable; what remains possible is truthfulness: the gathering of fragments of evidence, in a Thucydidean spirit, towards an account that still carries the experience of the event – what it means to record it without having witnessed it.

The composition of the Russian-language originals dates from 2014.


Cargo

He keeps bodyguards under his pillow.
His smart little toy tank’s always at the ready.
Victory is an outdated computer programme.
It’s been loading for years.

He’s not one to be taken in by metaphors,
the ever-youthful dictator.
His people’s language weaves cosy nests of pauses
to make room for him.

As in Eisenstein’s montage, he yawns –
and a child dies in another country.
Count the days. Soon victory will be ours.
The fruit of greatness sits ripe on the bleeding map.

Half the world is watching your back.
What’s on the news? The usual.
Count the dead. They’re barely noticeable,
those piles of dog tags that we’ve collected.


Bruise

Still the same hand, but now it’s holding a gun.
Used to the strings – can’t you sing this one
proving your skill in flattery and in pride?
Voice is breaking. No need for a rhyme.
Already you’re detested by powers that be –
sullen stare of a steely eye.

Here I am, turning red like a flag,
shivering – how I treasure my animal tremor! –
waving my body back and forth,
hoping the State would cure me with its power.

Try singing yourself, song! Don’t dare gag
on a handsome bait, a shiny hook.
Readily I renounce my name, my face.
In the trolling spoon of the sceptre and orb I discern
splendour beyond compare.

Don’t revolve, come closer, stay still, be mine…
Pushing others out of the way, I swallow –
Fatherland – sweet deep heaviness in my throat
roaring, hollow.


Eternal Fire

This fire – borne neither of the guns
nor of the missiles
without metaphors without punctuation –
it’s just fire inside
a gaping hole

I take in the war
with the joy of Gilgamesh

In a living tree I discern a weapon
in an animal – a sacrifice

I feel better and better
becoming a creature
of a higher order

unequivocal fire
unmediated by dots by dashes
a fire within a hole


Tapestry

Soil turned over, raw. Ravens, corpses, and flags.
Lamentations flow down the proverbial tree, onto the glowing screen.
You have gotten so used to him being alive, haven’t you?
Now you’ll get used to loving him as a dead man.
Deep into the eye reaches a root of a tree.

What does a mortal wound feel like: a lake, a maze?
Oddly, it feels like this: an empty frame
stands for a presence, a black square of the sky,
a cloudy mirror that doesn’t return the gaze.

Bodies ripen, ready for harvest, sorted along the lines.
It’s a toss of a coin: have I survived, am I dead?
Have I been sliced like meat, is there an arrow in my eye?
On the stitching, I strain to rise, leaving the other behind.

Enemy faces are all the same. So you portray.
Nobody weeps in here, doing their solemn work.
Death has put us away – delayed, postponed.
I open my eye and I see no soul.

What a beautiful tapestry my lady has woven of this event.
Soft luxurious fabric, exquisite needlework:
a soft glow on the face, ample room for the body to spread.
Pain curves like space, there’s no formula to contain it.


Correlation

The tyrant is afraid of a gaze,
of a shadow, a shade, a trace.
Better immortalize his future victories.
Make him just, make him magnificent –
a rapturous new event.

How artfully an aging body learns to conceal itself
old ailments
cloaked by a new triumph,
surgical interventions,
missing limbs, dry pogroms, massive defeats.

Power longs to be adored, admired
never losing its family ties
with arms.


Body Politic

In a history textbook
the spine of chronology
disassembles into the vertebrae
reassembles back in a minute
like a machine gun.

Pinches, displacements, fractures –
passing without a trace
leaving behind – no pain.
For the spinal cord of chronology
has no nerve.

The dying away of old and defective tissue –
healthy and natural! There are no defeats.
Push on the discs of victories.
Feeling any discomfort
in your head or feet?

Summoned to the blackboard
I cajole the teacher with the axiom:
I am like anyone, I speak like anyone
of the things that anyone would know!

Pressing my back to the wall, I sense
its solidity, as I babble, mumble
that my country – Oh, wait, I forget –
that my country – But is it mine? –
that it spreads, malignant
through each cell of my body…

In the eyes of others
I catch a glimpse of an inference
struggling to grasp
the conclusion.