Relocation
As I moved into the first house I ever owned,
thousands of Ukrainians migrated to the air.
Now they typed memes; now, they rose
into the stratosphere. It was multitasking,
some said. Some were walking their dogs,
but fingers softened, fists unclenched, letting go
of the small spool of the leash. It was spring, then,
and no one could own–or grasp–anything.
The Ukranians’ hands turned into soft wings.
Now the human wings wave at my phlox, the white
mildew-free cultivar “David.” Plush lips whisper: “My
phlox also blooms now in Bucha.” “Gooseberries
flow like wine at my dacha.” Ethereal Ukrainians,
o, you who dance amid the clouds. More
of you o, joining the sky crew every day. How
to host the malnourished ones with my bounty
of space and time? How to live this pinkish
life-death underneath, this gardening in awe-grief?
The murdered innocents embrace, speak in riddles:
“The home I thought is not the home I bought.”
“Remember owning weapons? I mean, arms?”
“My sister is in Irpin, paying off my mortgage.”
“The one blown to bits? “The very one.
Do you like my sense of humor?” I wish
you were writing poems there in the sky
and I could take dictation, but instead –
like I said – the rule is no hands. When you
dog walkers were lifted into the watercolor sky,
I hope your pets rose into the air, followed you home,
their paws turning into petal-soft doggy wings.
.
Olga Livshin was raised in Odesa, Ukraine, and Moscow, and came to San Diego as a Jewish refugee with her parents. Her poetry and translations appear in Ploughshares, AGNI Online, the Kenyon Review Online, and Modern Poetry in Translation, among others. She is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman.
