- translation from Russian by Yana Kane, edited by Bruce Esrig
- russian text: https://kopilkapoetry.org/?p=716
July
Doesnotenddoesnotstopdoesnot
Too much of everything
Again
Children were killed
Everyone writes that children were killed
All the poets write that children were killed
All the news is writing that children were killed
All in their own spaces
are writing that children were killed
It’s not like it would be possible to write about anything else
For instance
The legs and arms strewn across mud
Houses blown apart
Cities ground down
Villages uprooted from the soil
Graves in the playgrounds
Graves along the sidewalks
Corpses unburied
Railroad stations flooded with everything
The crowds swaying to and fro
The eyes of those who are staying behind
Basements with no bread
Basements with no water
Basements with no one left alive
And so forth
I am simply making a list
I am simply putting it into words
I cannot think anything through
There are no metaphors
This is just my teeth chattering
And while I am writing all this
Someone else is toppling into a puddle
Into black mud
Into the splintered beams between floors
On top of their not yet dead child.
Olga Agour
Born in Russia, lived in Baku, moved to Israel in 1990. Author of two poetry collections in Russian, one in Hebrew and a book of translations from Hebrew into Russian of the Israeli poet Yona Volakh. Member of the Writers' Union of Israel. Published in many periodicals, print and online. Lives in Haifa. Psychotherapist.
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