In Poltava region, there is the Psla River. In the morning, the fogs there are so thick, you can touch them. The sunrise is an hour later there because of the old giant trees casting shadows over the day. You drift in a rubber boat without starting the motor until the Sun rises, as you hear the singing and laughter of mavkas.
* * *
There, the catfish takes bread from your hand like a calf. The water is warmer than the air, and you can sleep in it. Crayfish have been cleaning human bones for a million years, looking at you with bulging eyes and saying: oh, another one. My great-great-grandfathers remember your taste, say the crayfish. Swim for now, they say: and you swim.
* * *
There, pikes stand like logs in the bushes five meters deep: a tree and maiden love drowned there, and the pikes are fond of depths and lost dreams; when I caught a pike over three kilos with a speargun, I heard a maiden’s cry and felt a silk ribbon wrapping around my hand and neck, pulling me to the sandy bottom: the games of mavkas.
* * *
There lives a fish called miron-whisker, and its roe is poisonous: but the elders say it’s not poisonous, it just brings up memories, and you die under their weight. So young people can eat it, but if you’re over forty – it’s death.
* * *
And there, frogs eat your strength and give you warts: big and black frogs, they’re frightening and unpleasant to look at, but they know they’re hideous and stay in holes not to disgrace the sacred Psla River.
* * *
People can be there until the Sun sets. And the Sun sets there an hour earlier than anywhere else. Sometimes even two. It sets quickly: one moment it’s bright day, and the next it’s gone. More than one Russian tank drowned there because it went in after the Sun set.
* * *
There, Russian sunken tankers stand under the reeds, while the mavkas mock them: you fools, say the mavkas, we don’t need you: we need Cossacks, and you are trash. And they laugh wickedly and sing.
* * *
That’s why in the morning you hear the laughter and singing of mavkas over the sacred Psla River.
In the cover image: a frame from the film “Mavka. True Myth” by the film studio FILM.UA
