Julia Cimafiejeva (Belarus)

Belarusian poet and translator Julia Cimafiejeva was born in 1982. She is an author of three poetry collections in Belarusian. Her latest book Rot was published a few days before the rigged elections in Minsk in 2020. Her poems were translated into many languages and published as separate books in Poland and Germany. Together with her husband writer Alhierd Bacharevich she took part in the peaceful protests in Minsk. She described her experience in a form of a diary. The book came out in Sweden under the title Dagar i Belarus (Days in Belarus, Norstedts, 2020) and as Minsk. Tagebuch (Minsk. Diary, edition.fotoTAPETA, 2021) in Germany.

 

CIRCUS

 

I was born with a traveling circus

inside me.

Just imagine, a circus

in a pagan village on the swamp:

jugglers, acrobats,

a bearded lady.

How embarrassing!

 

The traveling circus

grew with me,

demanded meat and fireworks,

demanded better roads.

But the swamp begot

fields of beets,

potato beetle,

indigenous proverbs.

 

I flattened my circus,

like an herbarium,

between book pages,

jugglers, acrobats,

bearded ladies,

yet they grew fat

under the blankets of pages,

yet they grew strong

on high-calorie letters.

 

They learned

circus tricks

from piglets and chickens.

 

When they were ready,

they found a ladder,

they drafted a map,

they did what they had to do.

 

They kidnapped me.

They ate me.

 

Then they set up

inside me

their traveling circus.

 

Translated into English by Valzhyna Mort