The Black Tar of a Crow by Dmitriy Shandra

Photo Source: Unsplash

***

The black tar of a crow was dying in my fingers. Head wrenched sideways, eyes turning in their sockets, beak opening and shutting to show a black tongue. She was in pain, and pain was fear. I had always wanted to speak with a crow, but here I could only weep. Bitter and beautiful bird – and, like all that is truly beautiful, something beyond the limits of its kind. Breed and multiply, but do not be beautiful; beauty cannot be bred, cannot be multiplied. A pink welt of impact at the back of her skull, agony lingering, self-contained as an orgasm. I stood by her until the light ran out of her eyes; crow had stood just so beside soldiers. Some might read a bad omen here, but my world is already thick with bad omens. Black tar in my fingers, melting into a figure with no body.

***

War taught me that after a man willingly says, “I’m ready. I’ll go,” he doesn’t become superhuman, doesn’t grow stronger, physically or in his nerves. But something in his eyes, in the expression of his face, changes in its essence. And it changes by breaking. That’s a cliché. You can’t predict it, and it’s hard to prepare for. It often brings together the most dissimilar people, and it’s like erotica or mysticism – any description is a cliché, but to see it in person is priceless, rapturous. And like erotica, like creativity, like mysticism, this step slowly lifts you above – and at the same time destroys you.

***

There are stretches of time when the voice inside falls silent. Morning, evening, night, morning. Pull-ups on a Soviet-era bulletin board frame. Coffee, energy drink, oatmeal, Nova Post office.

Give V. an intramuscular shot, O. an intravenous one.

Try to run a session for the fresh-faced enlistee punks. A book, a careful walk among charred ruins, only where the paths are well-trodden. In the evening, flow into the soundless current of gray, crimson, and violet patches of sunset, dissolve into them, forget yourself for a while.

… will be back after the meeting  –heading back out soon?  –  will be, but not yet. Hieratic sleep. Nothing to say; nothing speaks.

***

The rain drums on the tent. I lie half-asleep, wrapped in a grimy sleeping bag. I used to be a slave of the Armed Forces, doing dirty, heavy work; now I’m a privileged slave of the National Guard. In not wanting to run, is there a trace of surrender to slavery?

***

When I worry too much about death, I watch how greenery bursts bravely from the earth – invincible, mindless, beautiful. Pure contemplation. Here is our unshakable longing to be rooted in something, the yearning for a tree’s way of life – with its own time, place, motion, and detachment. My blood is already tarry and bitter, but the chevron on my shoulder is searing with rage and screaming in pain. I don’t pray. I don’t think. I contemplate. And I watch porn.

***

On the front line, you hate the enemy no less than in the rear, as some say. You just don’t allow yourself the excess of hatred – one excess among others – because excesses kill. You hate a little more humanely. And with humor.

***

The ant on my glove is almost invisible, they’re so alike. The same chitin-strong material, the same predatory yet muted coloring. Its chest glows faintly red, as if it’s reluctantly sounding an alarm. If you could translate that alarm into the glove, it would become a light tremor of the fingers – unnoticed by anyone but the wearer.

I carefully shake off the little warrior, so it won’t be confused with the glove, won’t merge with it, and keep watching. I think that if ants gathered in a large enough swarm, they could recreate a whole fighter in full gear. One army turning into another, red copper into red gold.

Up close, the swap would be obvious, but not in the half-light, and not to the owl-eye gaze of an enemy drone. Let it see only a glove shimmering red. Let the drone operator lose his mind, tossing grenades, tearing up the damp soil and brittle grass, scattering mice and pheasants. Let him spin his printed plastic feathers like a cheap whore – maybe he’ll get a medal. I think the ants and I can come to an agreement.

Translated by Denis Pinchuk & Bohdan Bondarchuk

Dmitriy Shandra is a poet from Ukraine, Kiev.

His most recent poems and creative nonfiction  have appeared in Poetry Northwest, DMQ Review, The Journal, Triggerfish Critical Review, Pennsylvania English, Little Patuxent Review, Thirty West Publishing House and others.

He is a paramedic of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.