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  SoFloPoJo
​Translations of PAVEL RYSTAR (Palad) Poetry by Ukrainian-American Poets


Pavel Rystar (Palad) is mostly a web author from Kyiv, Ukraine. He was born in Kyiv in 1968, and started writing poetry in 2006. Published in Novaya Realnost, Interreal nost Literary Almanac, and after the invasion of Ukraine, Rystar is a volunteer with the Ukrainian Armed Forces and left for the front lines to defend his homeland against Russian invaders.
Translated by Liya Chernyakova


***

Where your shadow crumbles on the pier
Under shrill-voiced seagull brazen shrikes
I wondered cluelessly just tripping here and there
Never seen by you and never recognized
~
The fog was crawling sleek as python over the coast,
The devourer of raw fishermen and celestial corpses
You were mixing words, positions, and poses
Warning of options and threats the internet had posed on us.
~
I was humming, agonizing every night 
Catching glimpse of your caressing moves
Strolling into the pier still staying out of your sight
Herding rustles-splashes-mists keeping calm and quiet
~
Soaked to the bone in profusely liquid glass,
By Novemberish weaned off busking warms
Once again with Internet, you flowed and lapsed
Me and pier are graying… probably with snow





Translated by Gari Light


Even If

It's not about this or that.
Or no one, and nothing really  
I’ll be your poet, and that’s a fact
even if my appearance is silly.

Utilizing rhymes, as if they’re daggers
demonstrating fairytale agility,
I’ll inscribe myself in your forever tablets,
and forgetting me will cease to be a possibility.

I will be collecting at all places,
all the drafts, and snow and the wind,
won’t hesitate appearing crazy,
lure you out with a smell of hyacinth.

You will know, it’s me among the others,
you will carve me out from the clouds,
leafy veins would not serve as the covers
frenzy of mosquito stings are doubts.


There would be that cool October pizza,
waiting in the garden just for you,
take a bite of me, as doing so, it’s a
heaven, hell, or this and that is true.

You would place yourself  in greenery of maple,
in a way, defending with your palm,
but the orange rabbit would enable
gentle fire of mine, to bring you calm
Translated by Victor Fet


On a Sultry Night
  
I was young and brave  
I ran Beyond-the-River, 
and I ran Beyond-the-Forest 
to assert my Cartesian right 
when my mom and dad tried to fence me 
in my childhood prison bound by the fifth tree stump 
I made a pledge with my neighbor, the dreamer Boris, 
to conquer foreign lands, 
countless villages in fruitful valleys 
Among the first to taste rock-and-roll 
we made psychos of superintendents 
then everything somehow faded 
and stopped ringing  
Boris takes care of his grandkids in Oklahoma 
I'm basically happy confined by the fifth tree stump 
but on a sultry night 
in a heavenly gathering 
coming like chickens to mother moon 
the stellar bodies sing 
of Beyond-the-River, 
of Beyond-the-Forest 
to me, a sleepless oath-breaker 


Translated by: Olga Shenfeld


***

Alice is leaving
It’s easier not to see
She says farewell
My Fox I’m going to roses
Be loyal or free
But pass to a secret tree –
No candle, nor bell –
As her chat is hidden and closed
~
Orange and reddish
Is a zero outside
Liver is grim-
After party next door to Alice
Desperate rabbit
Is tickling in cage inside
And my ribs for him -
Like a barricade back in Paris.
~
I’m drunk like a sailor
With the bony unshaved cheeks
I am looking to abyss
Or abyss is somewhere near
But somebody tells me -
Some heaven reception leaks
You’re looking my Alice
From the opposite side of mirror.




​
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