Issue 47/48,
Winter 2022-2023
Oksana Vasyakina
from the cycle of Storm Elegies
Translated from Russian by Ainsley Morse and Eugene Ostashevsky
17 February 2021
The Day Before the Anniversary of Your Death
The day before the anniversary of your death
Two stray dogs followed me on a winter beach
It smelled of gutted fish and sharp iodine
The storm had thrown ashore rags of pink seaweed and the gnarled roots of a
strong poplar
I sat on it, my feet plunged into the tangled tassels of algae
And the strays whining dug their noses into the sea drift hoping to nose out fish
battered by the storm
But found only splinters of plastic spoons and tatters of potato-chip bags
They growled at the waves and barked at the petrels bobbing on the calm
water
And then one dog laid its head in my lap and looked at me
As if the shore of the sea did not exist and only a mute plea for tenderness did
The wind rocked the petrels on the water
The stray dogs’ fur smelled of salt and dust from the coastal limestone
Along the shoreline someone had left bags of trash and they lay slumped like
dead bodies by the roadside
We went to the sea once
I drank warm beer in the shade of an awning and you were wringing out your
bathing suit and the water dripped down around your feet
It dampened the dust that smelled like dry earth
Everything smelled like rot and the water had gone foul in the bay
We went to the beach the locals went to
Because it seemed like the water there was cleaner and the shade of the cypresses
blocked the harsh sun
You helped me get into the water
And smoked one thin cigarette after another folding the butts into a crack in the
concrete
The summer felt unbearable and smoking in the heat like an excruciating pleasure
While the juice from the figs we picked from old Minnegel’s garden made me sick
It smelled like a wet rag
But I ate them anyway
No we went to the sea more than once
After my father’s death we met by the sea in September
Storms came one after another
And the wine was bitter the sweet red was bitter
Everything was bitter and even the Ayu-Dag seemed to be mourning
and also the glassy September light
We were twice by the sea
You always talked to the beachside strays like they were your classmates or your
brothers
You talked to everyone like they were your brothers
You talked to me like I was your brother
But I was not your brother
The day before the second anniversary of your death
Two filthy dogs were competing for my limited attention
And I scratched their scruffs through your black gloves that I took as an inheritance
and memory of you
3 May 2021
Above the Edge of the Winter Storm
Above the livid edge of the winter storm
A crow hovers like a torn black stain
Its body reflects no light and the color is saturated the crow seems flat
The blind sea tosses up plastic debris onto the rocks
And like part of the mass of pebbles it is strewn all about green red blue ugly
Or it is not ugly
The seaside pigeons could care less what they step on when they go along the rocks
searching for something to eat
The sea doesn’t deliver up living things
It sends ashore the carcasses of sea birds
Covered in gravel with twisted long necks they lie stretched out like tiny boulders
The barely pink color of their lifeless beaks rhymes
With the bleached-out cans of coca-cola
Plastic lids wear down like old teeth and ache quietly in the sun
The sea delivers up all that is dead
The opaque bodies of jellyfish
Quiver, enlivened by the waves
I picked one up and like soft plastic wrap it curled in my palm
The brown torso of a mutilated tree looks so much like a body in its dying convulsions
I can see the line of the belly and instead of sweat tiny salt crystals are sparkling
A cloud briefly covered the shore with its dark palm and it went gray
Everything is in motion
And the sea moves, blind
It has tossed up onto the rocks the scorched body of a suckling pig
Beneath the thick semi-bronzed skin shines a sharp spine and the darkness of innards
Everything that dies here doesn’t turn into carrion
Flesh salted by winter water turns to stone
Salt turns battered diving-ducks into part of a nonliving landscape
A petrel lies in scraps of grayish froth like lace
And the waves slam it again and again against the ruddy block of sandstone