PANTELEJ KONDRATYUK

 

 

Tatyana Larina Of My Soul

 

If you were Tatyana Larina, I would be so afraid

to write you a love letter.

Who knows. Maybe you are in some incomprehensible way

some familiar Tatyana Larina

the epistolary altar of my love.

 

If you were Tatyana Larina

your hand would caress the white and blue-red roses

in the garden of immortal nightingales' songs.

 

And maybe I really am afraid of your answer

because you are all Tatyana Larina

in the glorious reflections

on the other side of the gloomy mirror.

 

Did you kiss me that night?

That button that rolled

between the wooden slats, is it yours...

 

There is a ring that I left long time ago on the top shelf

between Emily Dickinson and Marina Tsvetaeva

I will send it to you with the blue wind

from the other side if I fall asleep

if I move from my side of the mirror to yours

I want you to wrap me up

covering my dreamy soul

with the stars of a warm loving universe...

 

You are somehow all in yourself.

You do not come out of your side of the mirror

but as if you are omnipresent

as if you are always there

as if you are always there...

 

If you were Tatyana Larina

I could not mind my own business

I could not wake up without thinking of you

I would be afraid of meeting you with a trembling hand

and from some drawer wiping dust

lest he emerge from somewhere

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin.

 

Anyway, I was impetuous

I revealed my feelings to you in a letter

I used epithets bravely

to describe the colors when you distinguish

between white and blue-red roses

metaphors – for deeper comparisons

in the garden of songs of immortal nightingales

symbols – for the secret of my revelation

oh epistle of my love

all in its own reflection

all in the blue fullness

of the sky itself a living contemplation

on the other side of the mirror

Tatyana Larina of my soul...

 

Lullaby For Radmila

 

I will write you a poem tonight.

I will not allow demons

to haunt and frighten you

I will come and chase them

from the threshold of your sleep.

 

I will write you a poem tonight.

You know me well.

I cannot write poems

if I do not feel something warm in my chest

I cannot be dead - cold in the soul

and in the heart - lively and quietly warm

and still with a calculated hand

arrange the record in rhythms and rhymes

as dictated by the oncoming verse of mine.

 

Like a glacier that floats lazily on a river

you cannot hide the perfect

for a poem dress cut

and everything that is inherent to you

everything that you could call yours

all the adopted being in you

is a perfect meeting

a perfect combination

into fullness of your beautifull soul.

 

You know that I must feel the warmth

that deepens me from within and permeates

in order to write the adagio of my poem

that my hand sobs and suffers the abruptness

of my inner demons

and writhes as if seeking white threads

to tear them from the paper sky of that

after it has gathered a small eternity

of crumbs of light beneath the infinite trapeze

of the merciful God.

 

I will write a poem for you tonight.

The demons have remained howling beyond the threshold

of the verses of my poem because I have decorated the threshold

with torn white threads

and the heart that I have torn from my chest

with the boiling strings of the lullaby of your dream.

 

 

PANTELEJ KONDRATYUK

 

PANTELEJ KONDRATYUK (born March 7, 1974 in North Macedonia) is a poet, short story writer, doctor of philosophy, professor. He has published poetry in the literary journal Balkanski glasnik from Thessaloniki, as well as scholarly works in regional and world journals in the field of history of philosophy. In the field of translation, he translates from Russian and Ukrainian, modern Ukrainian novels and Russian church literature.

 

PANTELEJ KONDRATYUK (born March 7, 1974 in North Macedonia) is a poet, short story writer, doctor of philosophy, professor. He has published poetry in the literary journal Balkanski glasnik from Thessaloniki, as well as scholarly works in regional and world journals in the field of history of philosophy. In the field of translation, he translates from Russian and Ukrainian, modern Ukrainian novels and Russian church literature. Scientific papers in the field of comparative literature and philosophy: "The Invisible Discourse of Death in Literary Interpretation - "the philosophy of pure identity defined as death" with a starting point from Abraham's burnt offering of Isaac in the Judeo-Christian written tradition, up to the writer's suicide in his own Holocaust literary discourse of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Marina Tsvetaeva" (2016);  "The Problem of Sensitivity in Postmodern Philosophy and the Future of the Human Race (The Human Heart - the Fiery Organ That Thinks) - 2023" Scientific study "The Existential Cramp of Being Expressed in the Language of Philosophy" ζώων κοινωνικών as slavic - bizantine anthropology vs/via  ontology and existentialism of ζώων πολιτικών as a form of philosophy at the ancient Hellenic world and its reflection over philosophical discourse of (post)modernism