APRICOTS OF THE DONBAS

THE FACE OF COAL

With eyes sea blue

And hair flaxen yellow

Faded a little

It’s not a flag

But my father

Standing in a pit

Water up to his knees

His face like coal—

With the imprint

Of an antediluvian field horsetail

Trampled by years

The sea hardens like salt

The grass hardens like coal

And my father turns like feather grass

Gray

He’s a man

And men don’t cry—

So they say in the ad

His cheeks are like trenches

Chopped up by the pit

And the coal taken

From my father’s face

Burned in Donbas bonfires

And ovens

And somewhere high up

A pit heap stands

Snarling

Like a dragon

Like a sphinx

Defending its Tutankhamun

And it’s only I who knows

That the pit heap in the middle of the steppe

Is nothing but corks from bottles

That my father drank

And ashes of cigarettes

That he smoked

Translated by Svetlana Lavochkina with Michael M. Naydan