In this village

In every hut – a small hut –

– a single hotel room –

– a nesting box for one starling –

– a hive for one bee –

there live, one of each:

not only the old people whose families died long ago

or moved away into the wide world,

but also young ones – of different ages –

men and women, lassies and lads, and children.

 

In this village

in the morning – from every hut –

they drive out cows to graze –

cows with one horn,

one tail,

one leg,

one eye,

one teat.

 

In this village

a lonely man

comes out of a little hut –

knocking at his neighbors’ doors

to stack up a grivnya with someone

and buy one bottle of liquor

to drink together;

but he finds no one,

and returns home alone

to his hut –

a small hut,

and a little later another lonely man

leaves another hut

with the same purpose –

to meet someone –

but this man finds no one:

never, nowhere, no one does he ever meet.

(Epiphany: to find no one to drink with

is a symbol, by definition, of being lonely

and remaining lonely; unreal opportunity

of communication, problematic

for the dwellers of small huts – and a real opportunity

of which the author himself is aware.)

translated from Ukrainian by Svetlana Lavochkina