NOVEMBER
Such a picture of withering
demands active engagement.
Chrysanthemums bloom into the snow
like the color of a wounded animal.
A free moment between increments
of time filled with decay.
The mathematical beauty of frost.
Structures organize.
The end of struggling through mud.
At the end of November the plum tree
smells like dog kibble.
We sit and watch the chickadees in the feeder,
drinking hot tea, a celebration of security
with dusk’s familiar arrival.
Who wouldn’t love the gray Sunday afternoon;
we’re already so far from the scene with the fox
dragging its injured spine along the highway
like stolen prey.
MILAN DĚŽINSKÝ is a Czech poet. The poem “November” comes from his first volume of poems in English, A Secret Life, forthcoming from Blue Diode Press in July 2021.
About the Translator:
NATHAN FIELDS has been translating from Czech and Slovak for nearly two decades. His translation of Marek Šindelka’s novel Chyba (Aberrant) was selected by World Literature Today as one of the best translations of 2017. Among others, he translates the poetry of Milan Děžinský and Marie Iljašenko and is an editor of the literary magazine Project Plume.
Read more by Milan Děžinský:
Three poems in B O D Y
Three more poems in B O D Y
Four poems in PN Review
I was the last place on the planet /
where astronauts slept /
my last customers were the planet’s /
last people
"The biggest challenge of translating Sachs into English, for me, had to do with tracking the movement of her mind in the forming of a poem."
Which vein burst / to offer the holy geometry of yearning / a homeland in your eyes?
I discovered a lot of secrets, a lot of combinations, dark, political, religious, ideological, personal, to do with chess; spying, double and triple secret agents from all camps, secret police involved in dirty activities.
Dream of a Journey: Selected Poems, brings to readers of English the first full-length volume of poems by Czech poet Kateřina Rudčenková.
One of those things most difficult to convey about the special conditions in which we lived was the visegradišag: that everything, buying bread, recycling, riding the tram, came with a surreal associated cost that was impossible to anticipate and could range in consequence from mild discomfort to soulshattering alienation
That thing you forgot to do last year / has turned out to be important.
They are women who want to look into the mirror and be satisfied with their reflection. Envy is born when you look into the mirror and don’t like what you see there. Everything about this sin begins with the eyes.
There was a rippling pond and the croaking of frogs /
and various birds anas crecca, /
there was the tingling of sand on the Borecké Rocks /
and the cracking of pinecones
For a moment, she wondered where all dead birds go when they die, which probably happens every minute of every hour, so really, birds should be falling from the sky not just from time to time, but raining down constantly, over both deserted and inhabited areas...
Photo credit: Pavel Růžička 
