APRICOTS OF THE DONBAS

MY GRANDMOTHER’S FAIRY TALE

When tears

Turn to rock salt

When the sea in the stomach

Turns into a coal mine

Mammoths die

And hearts are born on the sleeves

They swap mettle for liquor

And are hired for labor

Wait!

This coal mine will swallow you

This ebony beauty

Of stone

Maybe it was for her that the Cumans carved statues

Unshaven like miners in the steppes,

Wait!

She’ll give birth to a dead sea

Her waist is not sixty centimeters

Her breasts droop to her belly

Don’t go inside

You may not return

Like the child of a mother

Who doesn’t want to give birth

He plunged into her once

And came back with tears in his hands—

He plunged into her—a second time

And came back with salt in his hands

He plunged into her—a third time . . .

And hands full of coals

He was pulled down to the bottom

Of the underground sea

Apricot trees stretched their hands to the sky

Apricots put on hard hats, yellow-hot

And now when you eat apricots

You find coals in their core

This is the end of the tale

Translated by Svetlana Lavochkina with Michael M. Naydan