30 Days of Ukrainian Poetry - Day 27 - "Immigrant Zonh"

Day 27 and it's time to get back to that "bad boy" of contemporary Ukrainian poetry, Serhiy Zhadan. (The guy's been part of a band called "Dogs in Space", since updated to "Zhadan and the Dogs", he definitely deserves more than one entry). Quite a lot of his poetry has been translated into English, and I recommend finding it, but I keep getting drawn to some of his verses that haven't yet gotten that kind of attention.

That's our poet  - singing "I'm not an adherent of aesthetics, I'm a rock musician". 

Reading Zhadan's work is very different than reading earlier Ukrainian poetry, especially since so much of the earlier poetry I've found is very specifically about Ukraine. In contrast, his stuff is worldly, modern while still deeply set in place and time. He writes about other countries and foreign events, about booze and violence, about love; he writes kids' poems about cats (of course). He sometimes titles his poems in Ukrainianized English (when people write out English words with the Ukrainian alphabet - something surprisingly common). I was highly tempted to pick one with the title (written in Cyrillic with a Ukrainian accent): "New York - Fucking City".

But here we go with a poem whose title I can't even quite make sense of: "Immigrant Zonh". Does it mean Immigrant Zone? Immigrant Song, perhaps? A number of years after Serhiy wrote this poem, he did publish an essay called Immigrant Song, so maybe it's the latter. Him being a musician, maybe he took inspiration from Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song." But phonetically, it sounds like zone... maybe it is some reference I don't recognize. Anyway, this poem is included in Serhiy Zhadan's 2001 collection "Ballads of War and Reconstruction", and it hits hard.

імміґрант зонг

Сергій Жадан

немає нічого тривалішого за ці речі 
немає нічого ріднішого за ці муки 
на виїзді з міста сніг ляже на плечі 
торкнувшись йому лиця наче жіночі руки

дорогою перегоном котиться поїзд на захід 
плачуть губні гармонії з адресами сірниками 
плач повоєнна європо хай будуть тобі мов закид 
сумні чоловічі бари набиті мандрівниками

бо він уже не повернеться навіть коли захоче 
вода усіх океанів йому вимиває очі 
бо він не приїде назад і що з нього можна взяти 
серед блаженної пам’яті червоних п’ятдесятих

окрім готичних контурів завчених ним абеток 
окрім гранат і листівок окрім птахів таблеток 
пам’ять про нього дбає пам’ять рахує лічить 
в одну й ту саму ріку снаряд не влучає двічі

вулиця затихає здригаються пальці посуд 
смирення втрапляє в тіло мов пробиває вістрям 
коли приходить смерть коли зостається осад 
коли останнє ім’я видихуєш разом з повітрям

бо смерть наче білий цукор обліплює зуби ясна 
зі смертю приходить терпіння спускається і дається 
і починається тиша тиша раптова вчасна 
в якій не чути нічого навіть власного серця

Immigrant Zonh

Serhiy Zhadan

there is nothing that goes on longer than these things

nothing more deeply rooted than these miseries

on the way out of the city snow falls on his shoulders

touching his face like the hands of a woman

along the road, between stations the train rolls west

labial harmonies cry with addresses, matches
let this cry, o post-war Europe, be for you a reproach
sad men's bars packed with wanderers

because he will never return even when he wants to
the water of all the oceans washes his eyes
because he will not come back and what can be taken from him
among blissful memories of the red fifties

except the gothic conours of the alphabets he's assimilated
except grenades postcards except birds pills 
memory looks after him memory counts enumerates
the shell doesn't hit twice in the same river

the road fades fingers rattle the dishes
meekness enters the body as if piercing with a spike
when death comes when the dregs are left
when you last exhale your name together with air

because death like white sugar covers teeth and gums
with death comes patience it descends and is given
and the silence begins silence suddenly timely
in which there's nothing to hear not even your own heart

As you can probably tell, I have translated this poem literally rather than poetically, almost word by word, because that's what it took for me to understand it at all (and some of it may not be 100% correct... this poem was a stretch for me). I think with its lack of punctuation and unorthodox sentence structure it would be hard even for native speakers - or at least I'll tell myself that. I read somewhere recently that even a bad translation of a well-written poem is better than a wonderful translation of something mediocre, and this one was definitely worth the effort.

Time to digest this poem for a while before getting back to listening to Dogs in Space.




The views and experiences shared in this blog are mine alone and not indicative of the views of the Peace Corps or any other entity.