Yanka Dyagileva, “Hell Brink”

yanka “I don’t know now whether I’ll fall or fly. / I don’t have the strength to fly away nor do I want to lie.”

Янка Дягилева
Ад-край

Отдыхай, я молчу. Я внизу, в стороне.
Я в краю, где молчат. Я на самом краю.
Где-то край, где-то рай, где-то ад, где-то нет
Там, где край, там и ад. Там, где рай, там и нет ничего
Головою в порог — дверь закрой, не смотри
С башни вниз полетишь, если ветер внутри
Если нет, будешь камнем лежать под горой
Там, где празднуют пир при Луне упыри .
Я не знаю теперь — упаду, полечу:
Улететь нету сил, а лежать не хочу
Будет ночь — закричу, отвернусь, укачусь
Разобьюсь всё равно до утра
Постучу во все двери. Пройду по местам, где вас нет
Просто так — может встречу кого по пути
Поклонюсь до земли — головою в порог в третий раз —
Раза два мне ещё до пяти. До шести ещё три —
Будет срок и в острог
Тяжело здесь лежать, были б силы уйти
Или вниз, или с краю чуть-чуть отойти
Хоть на метр — присесть-посидеть-покурить
Может дух испустить, может, перевести…
Отдыхай, не всегда ведь со мною легко
Я не та, кто я есть. Я пока далеко
Я внизу в стороне. Я на самом краю.

Июнь 1987, Омск

Source: grob-khroniki.org

Yanka Dyagileva
Hell Brink

Relax, I’m silent. I’m down below, off to the side.
I’m in the land of the silent. I’m on the very brink.
Heaven, hell, the brink are somewhere and somewhere not.
Find the brink and you’ll find hell. Find heaven and you’ll find nothing.
Run headfirst into the threshold. Close the door, don’t look.
You’ll hurtle from the tower if there’s a wind inside.
If there’s none, you’ll like like a rock under the mountain
Where the vampires feast when the moon is out.
I don’t know now whether I’ll fall or fly.
I don’t have the strength to fly away nor do I want to lie.
When night comes, I’ll scream, I’ll turn away, I’ll leave in a hurry.
Anyway I’ll be smashed to smithereens before morning.
I’ll knock on all the doors. I’ll go everywhere you aren’t
Just for the heck of it. Maybe I’ll meet someone along the way.
I’ll bow down to the ground and go headfirst into the threshold a third time.
Two more times makes five. Three more times makes six.
There will be time in jail.
It’s hard to lie here. Would that I had the strength to leave
Or go down or back away from the brink a bit,
If only a meter, to sit down and have a sit and a smoke,
Maybe to give up the ghost, maybe to catch my breath.
Relax, it’s not always easy with me.
I’m not who I am. I’m still far away.
I’m down below, off to the side. I’m on the very brink.

June 1987, Omsk

Photo and translation by the Russian Reader

Sonnet 66

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

Source: poets.org. Photo by the Russian Reader

Anna Pavlikova: Enemy of the Putinist State?

anya pavlikova Anna Pavlikova

Sergei Ozhich
Facebook
July 21, 2018

Do you know what New Greatness is?

New Greatness is a personal test of your humaneness.

I know you’re really busy with family, work, friends, commitments, and so on.

But are you willing to go on living as you have, knowing the life of the young woman in the photo is being destroyed right now?

You still don’t know who the young women is or why she is being bullied?

This is Anna Pavlikova. She is a suspect in the so-called New Greatness Case. New Greatness is an organization concocted by scum from the secret services. They wrote the group’s charter, recruited teenagers into the group, and made it look as if they had broken the laws on “extremism.”

You ask what Anna did personally? Maybe she mixed Molotov cocktails in a cellar or called publicly for an attack on the Kremlin while standing on Red Square? Maybe she tried to enter the State Duma armed with a gun, set fire to a door on Lubyanka or broke a window in a United Russia Party office?

No, she didn’t do any of those things. She met several times with friends at McDonald’s to talk about politics. She also chatted with them on Telegram.

It was this that triggered Anna’s arrest on March 15, 2018, before she had turned eighteen.

“We’ll put you away for twenty years. When you get out, you’ll be an ugly, forty-year-old hag, and your parents will forget about you in two days!” hefty masked men toting machine guns yelled at the seventeen-year-old girl as they turned her house upside down.

Anna celebrated her transition to adulthood in jail. Before she was taken to a remand prison, she was held in a ice-cold paddy wagon for many hours. She was wearing light indoor clothing. It was minus eleven degrees Centigrade outside. Subsequently, she suffered inflammation of the uterine appendages (adnexitis) and was peeing blood. Her inflammation is now chronic.

“Prison sterilizes women,” the prison gynecologist told her.

Anna will never have children. Did you get that? She can never be a mother. The scumbags and degenerates from the security services, the state’s inhuman inquisition system deprived this perpetually innocent, exceedingly young woman of the opportunity and happiness of being a mother.

You think only the regime is to blame? Or Putin alone is to blame? I think differently.

We are all to blame when innocent people are tortured and maimed in our country. Our silence is to blame. Our indifference is to blame. Our lack of engagement is to blame.

“It’s not happening to me. It’s not happening to my children. Nothing like that would happen to me. I have it good. But what can I do? Maybe she is guilty?”

That is our stance, and it is killing this teenager.

Where does your humanity begin and end? What is your limit? When will you say, “That’s it. I cannot be silent anymore”?

When the person in the photograph is your child or loved one? Are you willing to sit waiting for that moment, as during the Great Terror, saying to yourself over and over again, “What if I get lucky? What if they don’t come for me?”

Are your sure that when the inhuman, mendacious criminal system that has been erected in our country sets to ripping you and your loved ones to shreds, someone will help you? That there will be people who will, at least, write posts like this one about you?

There will be a hearing to appeal the extension of Anna Pavlikova’s remand in custody at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, July 26, in Room 428 at Moscow City Court.

All you need to do is show up at Moscow City Court (Bogorodsky Val Street, 8) at three o’clock on July 26.

It’s simple, really simple. Please take the time and do it.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/831346247055084/

37521576_1629478263844301_7256625770926178304_n “This is Anna. She recently turned eighteen. They are torturing her in prison. 3:00 p.m., July 26, Room 428, Moscow City Court”

#StopFSB
#FreePavlikova
#NewGreatness

Thanks to Elena Zaharova for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader