APRICOTS OF THE DONBAS

APRICOTS IN HARD HATS

The apricot blossoms of Donbas

Grew pale in all the hues of the sky

The apricots put on hard hats

Spring already passed by

Twenty

Good men

Under thirty . . .

The laws of equation

Reduced them to twenty

But there’s nothing to equate them to:

They held

To the steel thread

Of the wire

In their cage, they stood

As if in Noah’s Ark

After the deluge

A ton of concrete

Fell down on the cage

They fell out

They were crushed in free fall,

Broke free

Yes, free

Like apricot trees

Ripped out by their roots

They were twenty

And twenty were left

Eyes left, eyes right

By the laws of equation

When the row was continued

At the cemetery

But my father failed

To keep step

He got caught in the coal

As they rose higher and higher

In their rubber boots

And with flasks with no water

With bodies like flasks

They rose to the angels

Yonder . . .

And now grandmothers tell

Their grandchildren a tale

About apricots

Wearing hard hats

Translated by Svetlana Lavochkina with Michael M. Naydan