- Translated by Andrey Burago
- russian text: https://kopilkapoetry.org/?p=724
My place is not among baroque arcades,
On camelback, in cities in the clouds,
My place is here, on my unrighteous land
There’s no way out.
My hogweed overruns my barren plot
My kin, piled deep, are resting underground
In Sviyazhsk labor camps, Ilyin remote,
Kolyvan, a jail town.
The bitter drink, the bread of an exile,
My ailing land is used to them by now.
I’m rooted in this soil, and I am bound
To share its shame,
and to endure
its trials.
Olga Anikina
Olga Anikina (b. 1976) is a widely published poet, essayist, fiction writer and translator born in Novosibirsk. She studied at the Novosibirsk State Medical University, earning a degree in medical sciences, and then at the Gorky Literary Institute. Olga is an author of five books of poetry and three books of prose, and winner of several international poetry contests, including Pushkin in Britain and The Lost Tram (Zabludivshiisya Tramvai). Currently, Olga lives in Saint Petersburg.
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