Igor Lapinsky was born in Galicia, on Ukraine's border with Poland, in 1944, and lived in Warsaw and Vinitsa, and since 1958 in Kiev. Having graduated from the pedagogical department of the Kiev Conservatory, he worked as a musical director for Ukrainian radio, television, and the famous Dovzhenko film studio, and was a senior research associate at Ukraine's Ministry of Culture. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, including most recently a Selected (2009). His poems have appeared in Druzhba Narodov, Zvezda Vostoka, Znamya, Chernovik, and other journals, and he was awarded the Vysheslavsky "Planet of Poets" and the Arseny and Andrey Tarkovsky prizes. The Russian publication of "I am a Separatist" had been censored and removed from Stikhi.Ru.
Alex Cigale's translations from Russian, as well as his own English-language poems, have appeared in Cimarron, Colorado, Cortland, Green Mountains, Kenyon, New England, and The Literary Reviews, Literary Imagination, Modern Poetry in Translation, PEN America, Plume, TriQuarterly, and World Literature Today. He is on the editorial boards of MadHat Annual, Plume, St. Petersburg Review, Third Wednesday, and Verse Junkies. From 2011 until 2013, he was Assistant Professor at the American University of Central Asia. He is a 2015 NEA Literary Translation Fellow for his work on the poet of the St. Petersburg "philological school" Mikhail Eremin and the guest editor of the Spring 2015 Russia Issue of the Atlanta Review.
Alex Cigale's translations from Russian, as well as his own English-language poems, have appeared in Cimarron, Colorado, Cortland, Green Mountains, Kenyon, New England, and The Literary Reviews, Literary Imagination, Modern Poetry in Translation, PEN America, Plume, TriQuarterly, and World Literature Today. He is on the editorial boards of MadHat Annual, Plume, St. Petersburg Review, Third Wednesday, and Verse Junkies. From 2011 until 2013, he was Assistant Professor at the American University of Central Asia. He is a 2015 NEA Literary Translation Fellow for his work on the poet of the St. Petersburg "philological school" Mikhail Eremin and the guest editor of the Spring 2015 Russia Issue of the Atlanta Review.
I am a separatist. I am nineteen years old and I am A separatist. I work day and night in the pit mine, Day and night I work in the pit mine, day and night, I chop at the dear coal, The black coal, the precious coal. When I leave for work mother prays, Early in the morning, in bitter frost and muck, I go to work, Mother prays I return alive, She gets down on her knees and prays: Lenin, Putin, Stalin, Putin, Putin, Lenin, Stalin, Stalin, Lenin, Putin, Stalin, Putin, Stalin, Stalin, Stalin, Stalin! I am a separatist. I am nineteen years old and I am A separatist. I hack with a pick, rake with a shovel The shale coal, the lump coal and the coal dust, Coke coal, oily and gaseous, the brown lignite And the anthracite, black as the night, The starless black night. I don't know who this Lenin is, don't know who Stalin is, I don't know who Putin is – I bruise my hands till they bleed, work them to the bone And see two colors only: black and red, Black coal and red blood, Black coal and red blood. I Am a separatist, All of my short life – A separatist. Mama tells me I have to make a living, To feed the family: Myself, her and my little sister. They raise hens, they also earn something – Many-many hens, very little money They earn. They pray for the time to come, That will come, once upon a time. Mother says that once there was a God and they prayed to Him. This God was called "Communism" and they prayed to him: Lenin, Stalin, Lenin, Stalin, Stalin, Lenin, Lenin, Stalin, And everybody had it good. Mother says they pay me very little, Too little, because this country needs a strong leader, And because there is no leader, there is no country, There's no country, since there's no Leader there is no country. My pit is not far from my home, very close to home. It is in the wall of a sandy quarry, and beyond – a field blanketed with rapeseed, With the yellowest rapeseed, when it's in flower. And trees rising on the horizon, but they are far-far off, And silence, blessed silence…. There is so much silence that it penetrates into the pit, It even quenches the dull thuds of the pickaxe and the rustle of shale Coal, And the screech of the dump-cart fuses with the chirping of morning birds. In the pit I see two colors: black and red, When I am free I see the sky and the golden rapeseed1. This silence would go on forever, if you were not to pray, Mother, To your gods, if you weren't seeking a master everywhere and in everything, This silence would last forever, but… Beyond those trees, that are far off on the horizon, There, mother's gods have awakened, and so…. Suddenly awakened and immediately they begot people, People without a name. Wearing balaclavas, fused into their skin, with AK automatics grafted onto their hands, They burst into our pit, these nameless ones. They tore the pickaxe out with the skin, stuck an AK-40 in our hands: You – a separatist, that's what they said, from now on – You Are a separatist. Then they departed for those distant trees where mother's gods dwell, Where mother's gods sit enthroned they hide and wait, for the sun To rise into its zenith. So that it bakes white-hot The yellow rapeseed and the carefree clouds, Scorches my back, then floods my eyes, and screams: Lenin, Stalin, Putin! Lenin, Stalin, Putin! Don't know exactly where I'm lying, either by the pit mine or my house. There, in the sky, black cross-hatches – thin from the side, and in the center– the zenith. The thick, black zenith. They told us as soon as the sun rises, you too must rush headlong into battle! Run screaming into the Great Somewhere, into the attack, running and screaming. Why are you chirring so loudly, grasshopper, be silent…. Hear how the ladybug is chewing on her aphid wing, Do you hear clucking mother's beloved hen Sasha As she struts Towards us? I didn't know where to run, whom to attack, But I am a separatist, and I rose to my full height, And immediately the sun crashed thunderously from the sky on high, And blinded me. And it deafened me. Dear old sun, have mercy on me – it's no good to meet my death deaf-and-dumb, for I am, dear old sun, so very young! Sasha is clucking – it means I can hear, She peeks with her black eye at my belly; it means I too can see… My innards have been yanked out by a shell blast and they swim in blood in the green grass. You can peck at them, Sasha, I feel no pain…. Peck away, my little hen, peck away, for you are hungry, and I can no longer feel pain. All my blood has gushed out, and I am withering, mother, I am withering, mother, Like dew in the sun…. Like the dew in the sun….
