daylon at mid-morning on 24 february 2022
By Jessica Mehta
i never knew Your arms
as cages ‘till this
morning. the scent
of marzipan, or is it
paskha, infiltrating too soon
for the season of Your
restraint. the fear You breed becomes
my own, softens
in, fluxes like fingers
along my nape. Your heart-
beat slows—i taste the oxy-
tocin in the air, spoiling all
sweetness. cortisol dissolves
like bottled bitters
on my tongue. “де будка??
Боже мій, де будка???” these sounds
i do not know, bursting
from the mouth that made me, married
with mewls i do
recognize: “все добре, все окей, Дейлон,
Дейлон, я тебе люблю”—no good
has come
when this is said. those lips,
over-chewed now, mangled like meat,
like the compelling cat pressed clean as new
dish beyond shaking fence fast to gray-
ness we walked only
yesterday. now, hear: the music
of Your keys. shrieks from boxed
electric. & You, my beloved, supplicating
constant as the strange cast
iron birds plummet every-
where (everywhere) like vicious
leaves, gathering me into salvation. [i]
[i] Yevhen Struk, a native Ukrainian speaker, kindly contributed to both the Cyrillic and Romanized Ukrainian in this poem and provided these notes:
· де будка?? (De budka??) means “Where is the kennel??”
“budka” is the most appropriate translation for a dog’s kennel. We usually use it even if it is just a box somewhere in the corner of an apartment.
· Боже мій, де будка??? (Bozhe miy, de budka???) means “Oh my God, where is the kennel???”
· все добре, все окей, Дейлон, Дейлон, я тебе люблю (Vse dobre, vse okey, Daylon, Daylon ya tebe lyublyu) means “It’s fine, it’s OK, Daylon, Daylon I love you.”
Here we use the word “люблю” (lyublyu) instead of “кохаю” (kokhayu). “Kokhayu” is used for love only in a romantic sense (love between two people), in all the other cases we use the word “lyublyu”. Additional note, in Ukrainian language we don’t capitalize the word “я” (I – 1st person pronoun) therefore sentence “Дейлон, Дейлон, я тебе люблю” should be written with a small letter.
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Jessica Mehta, PhD is a Native (Aniyunwiya / Cherokee Nation) American award-winning poet and artist currently undertaking her Fulbright Nehru Senior Scholar post in Bengaluru, India. For her website.