I have been missing from this year’s spring.
Witness to the winter aconite and snowdrops, the first daffodils,
but not the tulips or hyacinths.
I did not see the goldeneyes again
before they left for the north.
In Irpin, a woman waters lilies and peonies in front of her home
dismantled by bombs.
The canes of her roses are still living though they may not bloom this year.
Yesterday I made it as far as the first patch of trout lilies
beside the muddy river:
the last blooms had waited for me.
SUSANNA LANG’s translations of poetry include Words in Stone by Yves Bonnefoy (University of Massachusetts Press, 1976) and Baalbek by Nohad Salameh (L’Atelier du Grand Tétras, 2021). Her translations are published or forthcoming in Circumference, Delos, New Poetry in Translation, The Literary Review, Transference, Another Chicago Magazine, Ezra, and OOMPH! Journal. Her third full-length collection of original poems, Travel Notes from the River Styx, was published by Terrapin Books in 2017, and her chapbook, Like This, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Books in winter 2022. Among Other Stones: Conversations with Yves Bonnefoy, an e-chapbook of original poems and translations, was published by Mudlark in summer 2021. susannalang.com
HOWIE GOOD’s handmade collages have appeared or are forthcoming in Blue as Orange, Scapegoat, and other online publications, including MAYDAY. The collages are intended as a rebuke to the lifeless perfection of Photoshopped images. They are also intended to provoke an authentic response by combining images in a way that challenges old habits of seeing.
