Stanislav Belsky’s poems are haunting, reminiscent of stepping into someone else’s nightmare—there’s no escape. In these poems, written amidst Kyiv’s wartime reality, one simply continues through the day with an acceptance, but certainly not a surrender, often finding glimmers of the marvelous in the terror of the day and night.
If this nightmare seems all too real and inescapable, it’s because it absolutely is, having manifested itself in the form of war, or at times as a surveilled workplace, a symptom of unbridled capitalism emergent in the last twenty years—just to name a few particulars.
Belsky, a Russian-language Ukrainian poet, originally from Dnipro and currently in Kyiv, boldly addresses Joe Biden,
dear president biden
it is time to acknowledge russia
as a terrorist country
without fear of repercussions
ending his open call with, “in resistance the bush of significance was left as before / not a reminder, but objectively, toska,” situating us right back where we started: dreamlike matter. Toska, a word rendered untranslatable by Russian speakers, is evoked by Vladmir Nabokov as, “a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause… a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning.” In Belsky’s poems, toska is somewhere in between the past and the present. Perhaps it is toska which permeates his poetics with a ruefulness, that glimmer in the night, a space between reality and the uncanny.
In translating Belsky’s work I have attempted to preserve the rhythm of the original, the fragmented surrealism of its content and form. His lines often consist of a solo word suspended in time, isolated. Enjambment and singular bodies seem to be Belsky’s poetic language. A startling example is:
uncomfortable
to slide a look
into the elegant shoes of
emptiness.
“Uncomfortable” and “emptiness” are left to their own volition, bestowing the lines with a slight autology.
Unlike English, Russian does not use articles and it is often that I forgo these said articles to sustain a rhythmic demeanor, and in turn, imbue the translation with something a tad off, a slight discomfort, as though the nouns themselves refuse signification, or the specificity of nouns in time and place. I use these omissions to influence the English language into an askance form, tilting grammar and order into a site imperceptible; familiar, yet oddly uncomfortable.
–Olga Mikolaivna
*
боюсь уснуть
приползут змеи
или
упаду со скалы
или
случайный прохожий
ударит ножом в грудь
(моя поза
так привлекательна
для прохожих с ножами)
afraid to fall asleep
snakes will slither in
or
drops from a cliff
or
an accidental passer-by
with a knife will blow my chest
(my position
is so attractive
to passers-by with knives)
*
зрение
ночное
плавное
и немного
жалко бумаги
лимузин
и
новая плотность
сознательной
распродажи
стеклянный глобус
как
робкая смерть
с заячьей губой
nocturnal
sight
smooth
and a little bit
stingy with paper
a limousine
and
a new density to a
conscious
clearance sale
a glass globe
like
a sheepish death
with a
cleft lip
*
Мы переедем в новый офис,
нас запакуют, как сельдей,
в отдельные боксы,
и над каждым
повесят видеокамеру,
чтобы, не дай Бог,
никто из нас
не повесился на рабочем месте.
Надеюсь,
всё-таки будет можно,
уединяясь для решения
срочных заданий,
исподтишка,
совсем незаметно
друг друга любить
We are moving to a new office
we will be packed, like herring,
into separate boxes,
and above each
a videocamera will be hung,
so that, God forbid,
lest any one of us
will hang ourselves in the workplace.
I hope,
after all, seclusion will be permitted for the completion
Of high-priority tasks,
slyly,
completely imperceptibly
to love one another.
*
Ещё один
поэт-дитя
раскрывает передо мной книгу
волнистых струй
и шёлковых мотыльков
Ещё один
поэт-путешественник
раскрывает передо мной книгу
бетонных магистралей
и нескончаемых жалоб пространства
Ещё один
поэт-историк
раскрывает передо мной книгу
размытых солнцем руин
овитых плющом мыслей и гениталий
А я пожалуй
закрою свою книгу
о полоскании горла шалфеем
и спорах
с противницами тишины
Another
child-poet
opens before me a book of
choppy streams
and silkworms
Another
traveler-poet
opens before me a book of
concrete highways
and endless expanse complaints
Another
historian-poet
opens before me a book of
sun-washed ruins
wreathed in thoughts and genital ivy
And I perhaps
will close my book about
throat gargling with sage
and arguments
with silence as an opponent.
*
пустить встречный огонь
выжечь всё до последнего слова
думаешь: тёплый день ветер
но всё фальшивит и тянет
как пластинка на дряхлой вертушке
проснуться мгновенно: сам себе будильник
захваченный чужой любовью странным речным
течением
пением – не густым но настойчивым –
мартовским утопленным хором
и может ли быть ответ кроме обложки из пепла
to light a welcoming fire
burn everything to the very last word
you think: warm day some wind
but it all forges and pulls
like plastic on a decrepit pinwheel.
to wake instantly: an alarm for oneself
taken by somebody else’s love for strange rivers’
currents
singing — not thick but an insistent —
chorus drowned by March
and can there be a reply except dust jackets of ash
__________________________________
Stanislav Belsky (Станислав Бельский), born in Dnipropetrovsk (current day Dnipro) in 1976, a programmer in his day job, is a Russian language, Ukrainian poet. To this day he has published thirteen books of poetry in Russian, the latest being Friendly Conversations with Robots (2024). A collection of his selected poem, I versi migliori si sciolgono nell’aria (The Best Poems Melt Into Air), translated into Italian by Paolo Galvani, came out in 2023.
Olga Mikolaivna was born in Kyiv and works in the (intersectional/textual) liminal space of photography, word, translation, and installation. She is getting her MFA in creative writing at UCSD. Her debut chapbook cities as fathers is out with Tilted House, and other works can be found or are forthcoming in the Tiny Mag, Metatron Press, Cleveland Review of Books, and elsewhere.
