“Year's End” by Yuliya Musakovska, a poem from THE GOD OF FREEDOM, translated by Yuliya Musakovska and Olena Jennings
Illustration by Anastasiia Starko
YEAR'S END
The God of Freedom (Arrowsmith Press, 2024)
The year rolls to its end like a truck on a patch of ice,
stuffed with random junk, dollar store items,
used cartridges, funny figures on strings,
souls sold for nothing,
royal gifts,
burnt-out stars, masks, together with skin.
How much is left here, o universe, trembling and alive.
The smell of ash in the air. Neon signs glowing brightly.
Tomorrow’s rust creeps out on the body of a Christmas tree.
The expiration date will soon pass, relics will lose their value.
Wounds that won’t heal, will become less noticeable.
A stubborn plant in a pot, someone’s snoring in bed –
the landmarks that hold you from flying
off the edge into the void of a new reality, but really
into the river of the blank page,
a milk-honey one, thick and tacky.
The year rotates on its axis, back to its start.
The year turns into a wolf, pulling off last year’s sheep skin.
Yuliya Musakovska (born 1982) is an award-winning Ukrainian poet, writer, and translator. She has published six poetry collections in Ukrainian, most recently Stones and Nails (2024). Her collection The God of Freedom (2021) was among the finalists for the Lviv UNESCO City of Literature Prize and top eight nominees for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize. In 2024, The God of Freedom was released from Arrowsmith Press in English translation by Olena Jennings and the author. Her poems have been translated into over thirty languages and published worldwide, appearing in AGNI, Tupelo Quarterly, The Southern Review, The Common, NELLE, The Continental, and others. She lives in Lviv, Ukraine, and has remained there throughout the war.
Olena Jennings is the author of the poetry collection The Age of Secrets (Lost Horse Press, 2022) and the novel Temporary Shelter (Cervena Barva Press, 2021). She is a translator or co-translator of collections by Ukrainian poets Iryna Shuvalova, Kateryna Kalytko, Vasyl Makhno, and Yuliya Musakovska. She co-curated a series of virtual readings of Ukrainian war poetry for Jill! to to mark the second year of Russia's atrocious war against Ukraine. She is the founder and co-curator of Poets of Queens in New York City.