KIN

JULIA NEMIROVSKAYA
TRANSLATED BY BORIS DRALYUK

I worry about my kin:
she’s so pale
and scrawny
with dark circles under her eyes
I find old photos of her on my phone
and can’t help but cry
I offer her ice, warmth, an armchair
She won’t speak, but I’ll take her mind
off her troubles by chatting, reading
I’ll pretend everything is fine

While she
sheds light
and shadow,
my close one, my kin:
I’m kin to the moon

Родня

Я волнуюсь о своей родне:
бледность
синяки под глазами
потеря веса
Посмотрю интернет
и обольюсь слезами
Предлагаю лед и тепло и кресло
Развлеку молчащую
болтовней и чтением
Притворюсь, что все хорошо вполне

А она
истекает
светом и тенью,
моя родня:
Я родня луне

Julia Nemirovskaya is a Russian poet and prose writer who was born, raised, and educated in Moscow. She immigrated to the United States in 1991 and teaches Russian literature and culture at the University of Oregon. She has published two collections of poems, Moia knizhechka (My Little Book, 1998) and Vtoraia knizhechka (Second Little Book, 2014), as well as the novel Lis (2017).

Boris Dralyuk is a literary translator and the Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is co-editor (with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski) of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, editor of 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution and Ten Poems from Russia, and translator of Isaac Babel, Mikhail Zoshchenko, and other authors. His poems have appeared in The New Criterion, The Yale Review, Jewish Quarterly, and elsewhere.