Image source: The Carpathian Mountains photographed by Ava Tsarynnyk
The nineteenth, the twentieth and last
say eternal
complaints of sorrow.
He was not her child.
Utter charms or fumigate a corner, crafty she-devil.
Sew trousers for something unknown,
and yell without reason.
Shut his eyes tightly,
open his teeth,
call out: Changeling!
May you vanish.
And He would.
Where bears cast off blue breath,
at emerald-green mirrors,
the cold dozed on distant hills.
All was still.
The folks would call, but he
would continue to pick raspberries and blow on blades,
trying to imitate The Other.
And then, he would lull to sleep
and wake
with seven eyes.
He already knew many things —
valerian, deadly nightshade, mandrake, and sanicle.
He understood, and he knew.
When he talked, home
would glance at him uncertainly —
It was speaking to him?
Evil reigns all over.
Demons graze deer and hares like cattle.
A Chuhaistyr, limb to limb–roams about,
inviting passers-by
to the sound of the ax.
On waterless peaks, wood nymphs dance endlessly.
Water emerges onto riverbanks to make prayers.
And the drowned men dry
their pale bodies on boulders after sunset.
All manner of evil spirits wait to harm.
Waking at night, a hostile silence.
Lie trembling with horror.
The world was a —
and yet…
This blackout poem is based on the first page of the novel “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” by Mykhailo Kotsiubyns’kyi.
