September the First
Poetry by Dmitry Blizniuk
translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian
translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian
In a roomy, bright classroom, a female teacher
snapped the names under the white sheet of the ceiling,
and the kids pulsed, trembled, like bobbers.
Those eyes, hopelessly alive,
were quietly screaming out
the poems of their childhood –
the lost odysseys for mankind.
There was no teacher I loved.
The class did not reject me –
I was part of
the dwarf of the crowd,
but felt my foreignness:
a bullet stuck in a muscle,
a shell splinter in the folds of fat. I concealed my identity,
like a rose or a knife, and always waited for summer –
the honeyed Eden of holidays, a sunny sandbank
amid the suffering hell,
and summer, oh, summer – a rainy one, a quick, shortened one –
it always hurried like a nursing tabby that hears the sound
of an opening fridge, and the kittens of days slipped off her nipples,
the kittens of June, of July, I was getting scared, I was getting older,
and time accelerated…
Soon the day would be 24 minutes long,
then 24 seconds long, then
just one breathing in and out long –
and the spotted hyena of September the first
will jump into your arms.
The carrion of the clock dial.
On this planet, you spend your best years among monsters, sick magicians,
and giants…
snapped the names under the white sheet of the ceiling,
and the kids pulsed, trembled, like bobbers.
Those eyes, hopelessly alive,
were quietly screaming out
the poems of their childhood –
the lost odysseys for mankind.
There was no teacher I loved.
The class did not reject me –
I was part of
the dwarf of the crowd,
but felt my foreignness:
a bullet stuck in a muscle,
a shell splinter in the folds of fat. I concealed my identity,
like a rose or a knife, and always waited for summer –
the honeyed Eden of holidays, a sunny sandbank
amid the suffering hell,
and summer, oh, summer – a rainy one, a quick, shortened one –
it always hurried like a nursing tabby that hears the sound
of an opening fridge, and the kittens of days slipped off her nipples,
the kittens of June, of July, I was getting scared, I was getting older,
and time accelerated…
Soon the day would be 24 minutes long,
then 24 seconds long, then
just one breathing in and out long –
and the spotted hyena of September the first
will jump into your arms.
The carrion of the clock dial.
On this planet, you spend your best years among monsters, sick magicians,
and giants…
About the Writer
Dmitry Blizniuk is a poet from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in The London Magazine, Pleiades, Another Chicago Magazine, Eurolitkrant, Poet Lore, NDQ, The Pinch, New Mexico Review, The Ilanot Review, National Translation Month, EastWest Literary Forum, and many others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, 2018). His poems have been awarded the RHINO 2022 Translation Prize. He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine. Find him in the Poets & Writers Directory.
