Abyssal
Like a whole winter. Like Bruegel in the snow with hunters,
and kennels of barking dogs.
In deep barbarism, in the depths of perpetuity,
in the fury of flames, February lasts for years. Dead.
But its shadow lives.
And I grow in its shadow like bitter grass,
unable to shatter the fetters of ice, listening your breath, my sadness.
My sadness: between us famine and plague, and riders on transparent steeds
silently trampling empty fields. Your breath –
just stretch out your hand … but only soot remains.
The Music of Shostakovich
You’re the only one who doesn’t answer my letters and they burn up en route, the ash floating down to the ground. You evade snares and traps with the cunning of a wild bird. You have no name in our ancient drama. Like a child you play on the knees of twilit moonbeams and then follow a caravan like a peddler. The soldiers mocked you and threw you into a ditch at night. And now we’re silently drinking wine, dipping lemon wedges into our glasses. You’re my sacred music, and the hands of February are caressing you, making a blizzard in your crazed pupils, leading you to Shostakovich’s final C.
Anzhelina Polonskaya was born in Malakhovka, a small town near Moscow. Since 1998, she has been a member of the Moscow Union of Writers and in 2003, Polonskaya became a member of the Russian PEN-centre.
Polonskaya has published translations in many of the leading world poetry journals, including The Iowa Review, Agni, Image, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Witness, New England Review, Common, WLT, etc.
Andrew Wachtel is President of inVision U (Almaty, Kazakhstan), and a co-founder of Compass College of Art and Design (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan). Previously, he served as Rector of Narxoz University in Almaty, and President of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Before coming to Central Asia, he was dean of The Graduate School and director of the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, his academic interests range from Russian literature and culture to East European and Balkan culture, history, and politics, to contemporary Central Asia. He works as a translator from multiple Slavic languages and consults on educational projects throughout Eurasia.
