Transcript

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

At a young age, through a series of circuitous events, I inherited the role of organizing a long-standing, esteemed reading series in Philadelphia. I became the Literary Curator of The Painted Bride Art Center. Fancy title aside, the work brought me into a lifelong passion of reading, and of discovering and presenting poets from all walks of life, like here, on The Slowdown. One of my earliest and most embracing events was pairing the poets Marie Howe and Philip Levine. Just before reading her stunning poems from What the Living Do, Marie said, “Welcome, Major, to the great family of poets.” Since those days, I’ve focused myself on what it means to build and grow that family, how others can be invited and welcomed.

Today’s poem honors the immense feelings of connection art and poetry offer us. It notes what care is possible when we listen to each other and co-create a world where decency and regard are the order of the day.

A Toast
by Oksana Zabushko
translated by Marco Carynnyk

I drink to the only brotherhood I know:
To an itinerant theatre, to a village band on a country road,
To poets reading to each other in a room with drawn curtains,
To the artists’ studios on Andriivsky Uzviz. 
I drink to you, my poisoned-blood brothers, and especially to 
     you, sisters,
To the permanent neuroses you can’t get by without, 
To your doubts layered over a secret: the grass won’t grow 
     without you.
I drink to those of you I’ll never hear of, nor they of me,
To all the fingers wrung in the woods of the keys, to the 
     windfall of drafts,
To the post-rehearsal blood on the flutist’s lips, to the unnamed
And unrealized conception with a single moment of freedom
Caught within it, to the sweat in the gyms, to the drenched 
     ballet tights
Actors shrug off like moulted skins,
To the canvases coated with dried stains as if with the vomit of
     exhaustion
To lively faces turned into satyrs’ masks on the night of failure, 
     when the decision to destroy the manuscript is made, 
To the tears of impotence, to the dents of fingernails on 
     unclutched palms,
To the alcohol-burnt blackholes in brains, to the syncopes
Of the desperate muscle thrusting against the left breast, near 
     to tearing it through.
I drink to all the defeats that wash the shine from your eyes,
Sleep from your nights, the most beloved woman (or man) 
     from your lives,
To your painful envy of the talent of your tribe,
And to the fact that no one will ever know its true value as 
     you do.
I drink to the luminous insatiability that sucks you from inside,
Whistling in your bone hollows and choking on itself,
To your unending solitude in a world that wasn’t made for you 
(And it’s good that it wasn’t, for otherwise what would it be 
     good for?).
I drink to your not knowing whether this world wants to be 
     named,
Wants to be caught in your golden nets of notes, images, 
     chiaroscuros. 
I drink to your outcast’s lot, you martyrs without holiness
(And, frankly, perhaps without faith?),
To the ease you break your toys with, to the innocence of your 
     stripping,
To the predacious ecstasy of your chasing the falling star: 
     seek it!
And to your fickleness, which is in fact an immunity to 
     everything
That diverts you from your pursuit as a smell distracts a hound.
And to your secret indifference to the completed piece: 
     no matter
Whether it’s used to stuff the archives or flood the market.
I drink to your indefatigable marathon gropings, to all the 
     weeks
You’re failures, and to the hours you’re godlike.
To you, then, you community of those branded before 
     conception
With the adolescent hunch that life’s holding out on you,
I drink, and smash my glass, and here assert
This is the only lasting love I know on this planet.

“A Toast” by Oksana Zabuzhko from SELECTED POEMS OF OKSANA ZABUZHKO © 2021 Oksana Zabuzhko. Published by Arrowsmith Press. Used by permission of the poet.