New Year in Vishnyowka
(a lullaby)
Snow glints and softens
a pig's slaughter.
Mama refuses another
drink, mama
agrees to another drink.
On the wall—a carpet with peonies,
their purple mouths
suck me into sleep.
Small,
I've been bedded.
Toasts
from across the wall,
my lullabies.
Mama says no-no-no
to more drink.
My bed smells of valenky.
Without taking its eyes off me
a cat
licks its grey paw as if sharpening a knife.
Mama yells yes to another drink.
Mama's breasts are too big to fit into packed morning buses.
There's uncertainty
I would grow into a real person.
But on a certain day
in Vishnyowka,
a pig
is slaughtered, mama whispers yes
yes yes yes
to more drink,
I'm vanishing into the peonies’ throats,
peonies smell of valenky,
of pig’s blood
on the snow.
*
Clock’s hands leave a strange ski track.
Copyright © 2020 by Valzhyna Mort. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 17, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
“In Belarus, we never sip vodka. Vodka is gulped, always following a toast—a magic spell of adulthood. This poem occurs in a small village of Vishnyowka (this is its literary debut) on New Year's Eve, a portal of timelessness where the past and the future meet. As what could have been a pagan sacrifice, a pig has been slaughtered by a joyful bunch of accountants and long-distance drivers. A city child is half-asleep in a strange village house; the cat, the rug on the wall, the snow with blood and ski tracks on it, the voices from the table, everything has taken on mythical, magical proportions.”
—Valzhyna Mort
Valzhyna Mort
Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort is the author of Collected Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) and Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), which was cotranslated into English by Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright and poet Franz Wright.