APRICOTS OF THE DONBAS

THE SLAG PILES OF BREASTS

These stalks are

Like colored chalk

Stuck along the road

Just now and then a truck will pass

Amid the steppe in the grove

Donbas! Donbas!

The smokestack hisses

Into the sun’s ear whorl

You stand

In the uniform

Of a coal agent

And smell perfume-like

Of reagents:

—I’m a woman

My element is water:

It’s not only for making tea

Or washing dishes—no!

Though women don’t work in the pits—

They work well at factories

Handling coal

I wash the coal

The way I wash my braids

I crush the coal

The way I cut potatoes

Or grind meat

In the factory blender

And sprinkle it over with oil

Melted—

That is, over this borsht

I pour reagents

Listen, all these compliments

To Donbas girls on their beauty

Make sense

If you see those factories

If you descend into the pits

Or bathe in the poisoned waters

Of the sumps

Where the broth is dumped

From this borsht of mine

If you climb up the slag pile

And tumble under its blanket

To be more exact, down its colon,

And before that

See the apricot blossom

The lithe white apricot blossom

And in the fall

See their yellow curls

From the height of the mine trolley’s flight

Translated by Svetlana Lavochkina with Michael M. Naydan