Author: ellen
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Snow Swirled High in the Sky — Platon Voron’ko
This one is a little loose in a few places to make room for all the fun rhymes. A more direct translation for the first line (and title) is “snow fell on the doorstep.” If you can somehow make this poem work by rhyming every line with the word “doorstep,” contact me and I’ll give…
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The Frog — Lydia Povh
Here is a poem about autumn. It’s just barely winter now, astronomically speaking, but it still feels very much like autumn outside, weather-wise. From the anthology Favorite Poems, Volume Two. This is one of my very favorites.
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What Will You Remember About These Times? — Serhiy Zhadan
I was asked to translate a poem to read at an event commemorating the one year anniversary of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This is what I read.
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Ping-Pong — Lina Kostenko
Found on page 25 of Three Hundred Poems, this is the eighteenth poem and one of the loosest. I decided to let myself go instead of trying to arbitrarily exactly hit the conversational meter of the first part of the poem. The only real patterns in rhyme and meter in this one are towards the…
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Nothing in Particular Happened — Lina Kostenko
The original poem here is so breathtakingly beautiful, and I am so embarrassed by the crimes against rhyme and meter I committed trying to make it fit into English. I am not happy with this, but maybe someday I’ll get it right. This is the sixteenth poem in Kostenko’s Three Hundred Poems, originally untitled and…
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Out There Are Planets Far Beyond Our View — Lina Kostenko
Flipped to a random page in Kostenko’s Three Hundred Poems yesterday, which turned out to be page 378, and translated this little poem.
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As a Child Whene’er I Stumbled — Lesya Ukrainka
Originally untitled and found on page 16 of The Broken Wing of Hope by Lesya Ukrainka.
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How Bitter Is the Wine — Lina Kostenko
Skipping ahead a few pages, here’s the tenth poem in Lina Kostenko’s Three Hundred Poems, originally untitled and found on page 17. I translated most of this on my lunch break at work today, after eating an excellent panini and before meeting a very interesting stranger. Such are the things that happen when one runs…
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In Evenings Lit by Dove-Gray Beams — Lina Kostenko
The seventh poem in Three Hundred Poems by Lina Kostenko, pages 12-13. Originally untitled. A long one, a sweet one, a tricky one, one I’m not entirely happy with, one that’s a little looser in some places than I’d like.
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Don’t Let Your Wistful Glances Start Explaining — Lina Kostenko
The sixth poem in Three Hundred Poems by Lina Kostenko, page 11. Originally untitled.