Тіні забутих предків — based on the 1964 film
by Soviet filmmaker Sergei Parajanov
Ivan fed Marichka guelder-rose berries.
The deer witnessed their love in the rain.
They cannot marry. Their families—enemies so long—
they've forgotten why. He promised to return in autumn.
In the mud: a horseshoe, a cowbell, a ram's horn.
A vee of sheep, like blazing light, entered the circle.
But winter came early. Low wind under the doors & incessant rain.
Ivan, gazing at a bright star, slept fitfully on the grass.
Beskid, why don't you marry? the wind asked the mountain.
Because the green field will not have me, said the mountain.
Time melted into the boundless expanse
when she came through the birches to find him —
and fell from such a height, the birds were jealous.
The hunters brought a bear down from the mountains.
A constellation hanging from a trapezoid of birch boughs.
When Ivan returned, the mute could tell him nothing.
Marichka, so young and so drowned. Shadows everywhere.
Torches along the river at night—venial stars and eyes of fish.
He followed her downriver on a raft. What else was there to do?
To be buried among birches in the Carpathians by a lover,
who buried the child in you, required a special kind of music.
Grave-digging, he became fascinated with the texture of earth.
Tamed by his grief, the deer came to listen.
His mother held an invisible axe to her heart.
Slender candles in the church — bent tapers of life's roads.
Don't blow out the horse fire, it has to go out by itself.
It's shameful what love has done to him, the villagers cried.
They made up songs about his life. The icons knew suffering joy.
The villagers gave him a burning crown of thorns, a lamb for warmth,
but temptation arrived in the shape of a woman on a white horse
who cast a shoe. As he bent to the pony, she lifted her red skirt.
His eyes, slow as a summer river, rose to her face, where east meets west.
She offered him an apple. Why not? he shrugged.
Harnessed together like common oxen, they began a new life.
But he broke her coral beads, thinking of Marichka,
another broken necklace, one summer among birches.
Yarrow and aster fell before his scythe; he cannot love his wife.
His thirst, so great he kissed the mirror of the river
where Marichka slept. The deer came to lick salt from her grave.
Even the wind knew something of her name.
So they blew away spirits of the dead — insistent candles.
The pine burst into flame, the shaman and the woman conspired,
their lips seeking another kind of secret. Sleeping with geomancy,
& wanting a child, she stood naked in his circle of sycamores.
Signs of earlier fires. Trinal jealousy. A nest of hoodies, young crows.
Who throws corn at horses stampeding into the forest so thick,
no crow can fly? Milk spills into the river by faith alone.
The ram is riding the horse. Crows fall from the sky.
On the tavern walls, pine boughs whispered a warning:
Ivan, Ivan — Marichka is in the river waiting, asking, when?
The shaman raised the ritual axe, there were no witnesses.
He staggered to her — a red wound. Her hands answered him, come.
Milk & blood spills into the river. Wash his body beneath the mountain.
Bury him in the field with coins, an axe, & the clothes of his youth.
At the wake, bagpipes skirled, the floorboards shook —
men grappling with women's skirts under cover of darkness.
The fallow green field raises her moist hips to meet him.
9/22/1989
The Гуцули Hutsul, (an exonym:outlaw, thief, wanderer) of the Carpathian highlands of Ukraine and Romania, identify themselves with the Rusyn ethnic minority.
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