I first tried translating this poem in 2024. I got it pretty wrong.
The definitions were accurate. The rhymes and meter worked. But the tone felt off. I felt like I wasn’t reaching what the poem was actually about.
My dad read my draft and offered a clue: this poem was published in 1985, which marked the beginning of Perestroika — literally “restructuring” — a period of mass political and administrative reorganization in the Soviet Union.
Tonight I tried this one again. It’s not perfect, but it’s significantly closer than I was last time. And I got to use a very old word and a very new one.
I like to think I made a couple of word choices that nod toward our current age of restructuring and innovating and doing things bigly.
P.S.
Іван Малкович
Та як би, Боже, щось, не доведи,
зчинилось в небі кепське і з біди
ти мусив би втягтись в перебудову, —
зміни лишень одне: дай в душі лад,
всели любов між люду і звірят,
в зростом збільш хіба одну корову.
P.S.
Ivan Malkovych
Dear God: if something happens, God forfend,
so catastrophic that you must descend
and take up a restructuring endeavor —
change only this: give every soul its peace;
spread love among the people and the beasts;
embiggen nothing but perhaps the heifer.