Yuriy Serebriansky

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 I have never held the Moskva river in my hands,
tell me at least if the water is warm,
from April to October,
bring me a cambric shirt of
parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
the sonorous sounds of oars,
they glisten, and they did shine
when the rich fools lived there,
and my clothes were washed in the river,
blood stains from my nose,
down the river lowed,
the fish of surprisingly pale colours,
said it was their own

translated by Elena Davydova
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Photo by Abduaziz Madyarov

YURIY SEREBRIANSKY is a Kazakhstani author of Polish origin, literary translator, and cultural researcher. PhD Candidate. His prose, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in Kazakh, Russian, Polish, Swiss, American, Czech, Chilean, British literary journals and anthologies and been translated into several languages. In 2023 his novel Altynshash awarded by Nation literary prize for interethnic sustainability in Kazakhstan. In 2010 and 2014, he was awarded the Russkaya Premia literary award in 2017, his Kazakhstani Fairy Tales was recognized as the best bilingual book for a young audience at the Silk Road Book Fair; in 2019, and his novel Black Star, co-written with Bakhytzhan Momyshuly (1941-2012) received the Altyn Kalam literary prize. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Esquire Kazakhstan from 2016 to 2018, former prose editor of the Russian literary magazine Literatura, and currently he is Editor-in-Chief of the Kazakhstani Polish diaspora magazine Ałmatyński Kurier Polonijny. He is a fellow of IWP International Writing Program Writer in Residency 2017 and the founding director of Almaty Writing Residency annual program since 2022. His most recent collection Trams follow the schedule appeared in Kiyev, Ukraine in 2024. 

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