A Definition Of Poetry - Oksana Zabuzhko

[Larry Robinson]

A Definition Of Poetry

I know I will die a difficult death –
Like anyone who loves the precise music of her own body,
Who knows how to force it through the gaps in fear
As through the needle’s eye,
Who dances a lifetime with the body – every move
Of shoulders, back, and thighs
Shimmering with mystery, like a Sanskrit word,
Muscles playing under the skin
Like fish in a nocturnal pool.
Thank you, Lord, for giving us bodies.
When I die, tell the roofers
To take down the rafters and ceiling
(They say my great-grandfather, a sorcerer, finally got out this way).
When my body softens with moisture,
The bloated soul, dark and bulging,
Will strain
Like a blue vein in a boiled egg white,
And the body will ripple with spasms,
Like the blanket a sick man wrestles off
Because it’s hot,
And the soul will rise to break through
The press of flesh, curse of gravity –
The Cosmos
Above the black well of the room
Will suck on its galactic tube,
Heaven breaking in a blistering starfall,
And draw the soul up, trembling like a sheet of paper –
My young soul –
The color of wet grass –
To freedom – then
“Stop!” it screams, escaping,
On the dazzling borderline
Between two worlds –
Stop, wait.
My God. At last.
Look, here’s where poetry comes from.

Fingers twitching for the ballpoint,
Growing cold, becoming not mine.


	- Oksana Zabuzhko



Oksana Zabuzhko was born in 1960 and lives in Kyiv. She is a graduate of the Department of Philosophy of Kyiv Shevchenko University (1982). After having completed her post-graduate studies there, she obtained her PhD in Philosophy of Arts in 1987. Since then she has been working as an Associate Scholar for the Institute of Philosophy of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv.**

Zabuzhko was a Fulbright Fellow in the United States in 1994 (at Harvard University and the University of Pittsburgh), and taught Ukrainian culture and literature as a Writer-in-Residence at Penn State University in 1992. She also writes for journals and magazines on various literary issues, and has worked as a columnist for one of the country’s major weeklies. She is Vice-President of the Ukrainian PEN-center, and Distinguished Creative Writing Professor at Kiev Shevchenko University.