INSTEAD OF SONNETS OR OCTAVES
by Pavlo Tychyna, 1920

A short drizzle -- and the pavements are spotted with typhus...

A young novelist: -- "I don't want to, I can't write! The city is so oppressive,
life unnerves me."

I say nothing. Somewhere nearby a bomb...

"If only I could get away, you know, to the village. Swim, walk in the dew."

"Smash the saboteur!" -- I read on a poster.

And behind us old beggar women
stretch out their hands.

Grass grows, wherever it wants. The wind hurls the army mobilization
orders into the mud. The child cries -- "Milk!" but there's not even
a crumb
in the hearth.

You tell me: what is counterrevolution?

 


translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz & Wanda Phipps

tych8.doc 1/29/90

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