Translated from Russian by Andrew Watchel
For the earth, what’s a body
but an excuse to cover
and hide leaves, snows
and forgetting beneath a veil?
Cease to be.
At dawn the birds cry
over every dying thing,
over ugliness and beauty.
At dawn they cry and dance.
O, heart, why do you kneel?
As if begging for alms.
You’ll be burned, your ash scattered,
no one will remember you.
And my heart responds:
“A burn from your shoulder remains
on my shoulder.”
An alien heart, the sun growing cold.
Anzhelina Polonskaya was born in Malakhovka, a small town near Moscow. Since 1998, she has been a member of the Moscow Union of Writers and in 2003, Polonskaya became a member of the Russian PEN-centre. In 2004 an English version of her book, entitled A Voice, appeared in the acclaimed “Writings from an Unbound Europe” series at Northwestern University Press. This book was shortlisted for the 2005 Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation. Between 2006 and the present Polonskaya has had the opportunity to participate in a number of prestigious writing residencies, including those of the Cove Park Scottish Arts Council, the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, the MacDowell Colony, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, and the Villa Sträuli in Zurich.
Polonskaya has published translations in many of the leading world poetry journals, including The American Poetry Review, AGNI, Ploughshares and The Kenyon Review.
In October 2011 the “Oratorio-Requiem” Kursk, whose libretto consists of ten of Polonskaya’s poems had its acclaimed debut at the Melbourne Arts Festival. In 2013 the bilingual edition Paul Klee’s Boat was published by Zephyr Press and shortlisted for the 2014 US PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Zephyr Press published a second collection of Polonskaya’s work entitled To the Ashes in 2019. Her work has also been translated into German, Dutch, Slovenian, Latvian, and Spanish.
