Translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings
Creaking like hinges and bolts
attached to the shutters — in a section
Pärt listened to a bee choir enveloped
in a golden translucence in quiet
if the bees grew to love Bach
if the hive was filled with music
he would not have to rely on string bow masts
silk and felt pads
sounds in grooves – in compressed light
in the silver composition of wings
Bach’s love of bees glows
the conductor’s baton is bent
from the synchronization of the bows
from that single movement – mirrored vibrations
a cosmic dust shines all around
and sound smells like ripe feather grass
and it’s totally unknown
how Pärt will get honey from these bees
from the tight strings of horsehair
from pine for shutters and podiums
from those uncertain cosmic movements
disharmony – chaos – darkness
from sharp edges – from round and streamlined –
from where we began
from silence or from a string orchestra?
from a finger against lips – from membranes in ears?
the Book of Judgment or the Book of Ezra?
from the word turned into a spirit?
in “The Passion of Matthew” – the bees
have quiet and heavenly voices
we will never find out
why Bach keeps bees for us
* Arvo Pärt. Wenn Bach Bienen gezüchtet hätte (1976)
Vasyl Makhno is a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, essayist, and translator. He is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, most recently A Poet, the Ocean, and Fish (2019) He has also published a book of short stories House in Bating Hollow (2015) and three books of essays The Gertrude Stein Memorial Cultural and Recreation Park (2006) and Horn of Plenty (2011), Suburbs and Borderlands (2019), two plays Coney Island (2006) and Bitch/Beach Generation (2007). He has also translated Zbigniew Herbert’s and Janusz Szuber’s poetry from Polish into Ukrainian, and edited an anthology of young Ukrainian poets from the 1990’s. His writing is widely translated in many languages. Collections of poetry, prose and essays books appeared in Poland, Serbia, Israel, Romania, and USA. He is the 2013 recipient of Serbia’s Povele Morave Prize in Poetry and BBC Book of the Year Award 2015. Makhno currently lives in New York City.
Olena Jennings is the author Songs from an Apartment (Underground Books, 2017) and Memory Project (Underground Books, 2018.) Her translations of Ukrainian poetry appear in the anthology Words for War (Academic Studies Press, 2017, in collaboration with Oksana Lutsyshyna), the anthology White Chalk of Days (Academic Studies Press, 2017,) Poetry International, and Wolf. Her translations of Iryna Shuvalova’s poetry collection in collaboration with the author, will be released in fall 2019 by Lost Horse Press. She is 2018 recipient of a New Work Grant from the Queens Council of the Arts. She is the curator of the Poets of Queens reading series.
