by Alex Averbuch
translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky
.
how to survive what has already happened
.
and at every moment
pulls irresistibly towards itself
come closer
touch
.
yet you evade it
hide your hands behind your back
turning away your face
as if not recognizing
.
but as soon as it looms in the distance
.
something pulls on
the umbilical cord
dragging you into this tinted yellow flow
which remembers with its every bubble
the calm and colorless waters
.
deprived of the strength to flounder
you grow faint from pain
.
because now again you’re well
able to see them all so clearly
that only a muted line
separates the two pleas
.
yours – of not-being-born
theirs – of not-dying
.
Alex Averbuch, a native of Novoaidar, Luhansk region, Ukraine (b. 1985), is a Ukrainian poet, translator, and scholar. He is the author of three books of poetry and an array of literary translations between Hebrew, Ukrainian, English, and Russian. His poetry, original and in translation, has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. His latest book Zhydivs’kyi korol’ (The Jewish King) was published in 2021 and was a Shevchenko National Prize finalist. Averbuch is active in promoting Ukrainian-Jewish relations. He has translated into Hebrew and published over thirty selections of poetry by contemporary Ukrainian poets. Currently he is compiling and editing an anthology of contemporary Ukrainian poetry in Hebrew translation.
Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky are poets, scholars, and translators. Their translations were featured in such venues as Modern Poetry in Translation, Words Without Borders, Poetry International, and Best European Fiction series from Dalkey Archive Press. Winners of the first place in the 2014 Joseph Brodsky-Stephen Spender translation competition, they co-edited Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, and co-translated Apricots of Donbas, a collection of selected poems by Lyuba Yakimchuk, and The Voices of Babyn Yar, a book of poems by Marianna Kiyanovska. Their work has been supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Ukrainian Book Institute, Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Peterson Literary Fund, Fulbright Scholar Program, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Endowment for the Arts.
M-DASH 