Stanislav Belsky – 4 haikus

planes scream over the city
the inhabitants poured into the school yard
are we in hell or do we get a pass this time?

над городом ревут самолёты
жители высыпали на школьный двор:
мы в аду или в этот раз обойдётся?

*

a long story, unfortunately
the story of the disease
of a strange person

долгая история, к сожалению
история болезни
одного странного человека

*

they ask – which god to pray to
probably the god of Nato
he doesn’t hear us yet, he has plenty of worries

спрашивают: какому богу молиться?
наверное, богу Нато
он пока не слышит нас, весь в заботах

*

I sleep so little at night
because of frequent air raid sirens
that during the day I fell asleep under the dentist’s burr

так мало сплю ночью
из-за частых воздушных тревог
что днём уснул под бором у зубного врача


Translated by Valentina Meloni and the author
Thanks to Lyn Coffin
Series edited by Emilia Mirazchiyska

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Stanislav Belsky
Stanislav Belsky (Станислав Бельский) is a Russian language Ukrainian poet, born in Dnipropetrovsk (Ukraine, renamed to Dnipro now) in 1976. He’s also translator of contemporary Ukrainian poetry to Russian and he works as a programmer. He has been published in many magazines "Vozdukh", "Arion", "Volga", "Novy Mir", "Novy Journal", "Interpoezia", "Druzhba Narodov", "Homo Legens", on the sites "Soloneba", "Topos", "polutona" and he has published nine books of poetry in Russian: «Рассеянный свет» [Scattered Light] (2008), «Птицы существуют» [Birds Exist] (2014), «Станция метро Заводская» [Undeground Station Zavodskaya] (2015), «Путешествие начинается» [Travel Begins](2016), «Синематограф» [Cinematograph] (2017), «И другие приключения» [And Other Adventures] (2018), «Музей имён» [Museum Of Names] (2019), «Ошибочные теоремы» [Mistaken Theorems] (2020), «Книга возвращений» [Book Of Returns] (2021). Individual poems were translated into Polish and were published in magazines "Wizje" and "Helikopter"; into Czech in the magazine “Tvar”; into Hebrew in the magazine “Nekudataim”. Paolo Galvagni had translated into Italian some haiku of his set of haikus «Хайку из школьного подвала» [Haiku from the school basement ] using the transcription of his surname Bel’skij. Belsky is curator of the book poetry series «Тонкие линии» ["Thin lines"] and co-organizer of a Dnipro and Kyiv poetry festival «Чернил и плакать» ["Get ink and weep"]. Lives in Kyiv and Dnipro.