​Poems by Olga Bragina 

​on the eve of her thirty-seventh birthday Virginia Woolf
started keeping a diary
which means she was the same age I am now
with the First World War ending, literature hadn't saved anyone,
perhaps it simply saves- I still don't know
details of everyday life, books read, stories written,
war again
perhaps in this world there is only writing and war
then there's love, the source of war and writing
there's nobody else to talk to,
to ensure you didn't live in vain,
that your words mean something, or mean nothing, but simply
to talk
about the weather at least, if there's nothing else to talk about
the rooks are here, the acacias are in bloom, the shop has a new
coat in the window-
something simple, something timeless
not that I know where you are or can hope to know
my diary is written for you, for it is simply like the air
take a look at this city you've never been to
we should live here together, go for walks sometimes,
more often not, since we need no one but each other
you said it was a southern town,
the winters nearly the same as yours
but shorter by a month or two
we would never be apart for a day, were it not for the war,
that's out of the question
while the world is falling apart, no one cares about another's love
such nonense
when the world is collasping, burying us in rubble,
and all the warmth has gone
 
 
Translated from Ukrainian by Mark Wingrave
 

​Olga Bragina (Kyiv 1982) is a poet, prose writer, and translator. Bragina is the author of six books: 
Applications (2011), Namedropping (2012), Background Light (2018), Speech is Like a Flash Lamp (2020),  Prisms of Pleroma (2021, prose collection), and Pelicans (2021, novel). Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Vozdukh, Interpoezia, Polutona, Novaya Yunost’, Volga, Zinziver, Deti Ra, "Spoke" (USA), "Eurolitkrant" (Belgium), "South Florida Poetry Journal", "Words without Borders", "AGNI" (USA),Springhouse Journal (USA), "Wakat", "Helikopter", "Babiniec Literacki" (Poland), "Ravt", "Revista Kametsa" (Peru), "Virus" (Turkey), "Med Andra Ord", "Kultur" (Sweden), "Inkroci" (Italy), and others.
Her tranlslations of John High’s poetry collection Vanishing Acts and Katie Farris's poetry collection Ice for You were published in Kyiv in 2018 and 2021, respectively.

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