translated from the Ukrainian by John Hennessy and Ostap Kin

Unknown saints have appeared in the city,
prayed to its stones and slept on its mats.
What’s the connection to the lord with such coverage?
Draw crosses on the houses you need.

After them the military comes and sets fire to the city,
begins to slaughter atheists and the laity.
And then Jonah writes an explanatory letter,
gathers his possessions and heads off overseas.

Today, in Spain, he thinks, there’s snow on the passes,
and on the beaches children catch golden jellyfish,
there’s work and sins don’t choke you at night,
the wind hides there in the folds of fishermen’s clothes.

And here among these Assyrians it gets scarier every day
and there’s nowhere to hide from the fire,
and what do they care, the Assyrians, about my revelations,
it’s funny to think that I could stop it all.

He gets on board with everyone on the rubber raft,
and the sea has no shore and no bottom,
he pays the ferryman, removes a wedding ring from his hand,
rations water and cigarettes for three days.
But in the middle of the sea, the patrol stops them,
and they pierce one of Jonah’s lungs with the sharpest bullet,
and he sinks to the bottom, which doesn’t exist, and while he goes,
the lord, who all this time was god knows where,
                                                         extends his hand to him.

I will spit you out on shore as the biggest fish spits out the bait,
I will breathe life into you like sound through a trumpet,
I will give you back your voice if you’ve really lost it.
You must live where you must and don’t ask why.

If you all escape and avoid the raids,
if you get lost in foreign cities,
you still won’t be happy where no one is waiting for you.
Exile always turns into silence.

I understand you don’t want to live among trouble and fire,
I understand that all of my fences bother you,
you can run away from me, but not from yourself.
And from me, frankly, you won’t escape either.

Then Jonah dries his belongings and comes back.
He airs out his house, sees how the apple orchard has grown.
Apples fall and lie in the grass
like fish thrown on the shore—not dead yet but no longer alive.

And if you don’t collect them every day, they will certainly die.
And the dew will appear on their skin like mercury.
The lord guards and takes care of himself on his own.
But you need to look after the trees every day.

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Ostap Kin is the editor, and co-translator with John Hennessy, of Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond (forthcoming from: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute), the editor of New York Elegies: Ukrainian Poems on the City, and the co-translator, with John Hennessy, of Serhiy Zhadan’s A New Orthography, which was a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and co-winner of the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. He co-translated, with Vitaly Chernetsky, Yuri Andrukhovych’s Songs for a Dead Rooster, a collection of selected poems.

John Hennessy is the author of two poetry collections, Bridge and Tunnel and Coney Island Pilgrims. He is the co-translator, with Ostap Kin, of A New Orthography, selected poems by Serhiy Zhadan, finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, 2021, and co-winner of the Derek Walcott Prize, 2021. Hennessy teaches at the University of Massachusetts.

To learn more about Serhiy Zhadan, read this introduction by Ostap Kin.

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