Meeting the Kobzar

Before I left for Ukraine I had been thinking about
Shevchenko. I wanted to read his work,
I wanted a Ukrainian guide, a book to take
to Kyiv with me.
On my last day at work, Mo was in Kyiv.
We hated each other, I wanted to work, she
followed me, all the way, I pounded
around the outer ring road, carrying a
cake, I wanted -
The bookshop.
At the end of Khreshatnick, the major
street in Kyiv, near Independence Square,
I had seen a bookshop. Old, but new, Soviet,
faded, Ukrainian, a copy of Samuel Beckett’s
Molloy, in the window, which I now own.
I was looking for Ulysses, for Simon.
The bookshop was closed, a lady arrived,
In Kyiv, I repeatedly had an experience
of language. Sometimes, I was more
understood, without speaking a common
language. The feeling, and contact, is more
direct. I said hello in Ukrainian, she
said hello in Russian. I said, in Russian, I don’t
speak Russian. I don’t even know in Ukrainian,
how to say I don’t speak Ukrainian. I can say,
I am a lecturer, my Grandparents were from
Ukraine, count to 1000, but shopping in Ukrainian
was impossible. Somehow, in tangled non-
Russian, non-Ukrainian, and good no
English, I got the copy of Beckett, Ulysses
was due in on Monday