“The country lies like a puddle …”
by Lyudmila Khersonskaya
Translated by Anna Halberstadt
Lyudmila Khersonskaya was born in Odessa in 1964. She is the author of four award-winning books of poetry. Her poems were published in many literary magazines in Ukraine and other countries. Her poems were translated into German, English, Polish, and Lithuanian. 
The country lies like a puddle on a military map,
any country gets attacked in March,
June, July, August, September, October,
while it rains outside and maps are strewn in courtyards.
Stop, who’s here, a general on cotton legs,
he is followed by a man without a world, and the world is fucked,
the world gets a checkmate and Russian mat, three stories high,
mat is forbidden, so the world continues on the brink of war
between the caves.
A suitcase—purgatory—hell, a railroad station in front of him.
Who said, there will be no war? No one.
A small grey man has cancelled
the twenty-first century,
he turned the hands of the century clock
to the wintertime of war.



2014
Lyudmila Khersonskaya was born in Odessa in 1964. She is the author of four award-winning books of poetry. Her poems were published in many literary magazines in Ukraine and other countries. Her poems were translated into German, English, Polish, and Lithuanian.