And then this poem by Roman Osminkin (translated by Ainsley Morse and Bela Shayevich):
you go to protest after protest
you read, foaming at the mouth,
about blighted injustice and the stormclouds gathering over the nation
you hand out literature
you wave flags
and you might think you’d end up in the top results at least once
but no
not once not even one time
best case scenario you’re implied between the lines in some local gazette
and that’s all she wrote
while now when he drops
just a snatch of fuckery
and thoughtlessly at that
your friend the poet is wallowing in glory
but since you’re fundamentally not vindictive
you write it all off to the warped logic of the media
and you forget your childish hurt feelings
after all what could be nicer
than your friend the poet alive, unharmed
standing in the doorway, smiling
opening a bottle of champagne
clamoring for a toast to glorious fuckery
And then reading this paragraph in this essay by Raha Namy:
Recently, any old kind you are becoming aware of a growing new sensation: wanting to move to a new land that will surround you with neither this nor that language, with yet another language. A place that will force you to face once again the challenge of coding and decoding, building language consciously and with effort, understanding it and not understanding it, simply trusting the still inaccessible sounds and forms to take you away into new mysterious territories. You are feeling the urge for yet another unknown, a place whose foreign oral environment will mirror your inner turmoil of constantly feeling like being an outsider, a foreigner, no matter where, not fully belonging in the first or the second land, in the first or the second language, forever needing to flow.