In the time of the military aggression that continues to devastate the country, especially through six month February – August 2022, Ukrainian poets create a powerful layer of literature that expresses the deep pain of the entire nation. Here we present selected poems of seven Ukrainians living these hard times when war is at arm’s length.
Nadiia Vyshnevska is a Ukrainian translator and lecturer at the Department of Oriental Studies named after Professor Yaroslav Dashkevych at the University of Lviv. Currently stationed in France, Nadiia has gathered the poems and translated them for Upplitt Magasin.
Dark ploughland‘s furrowed, hey, hey,
Dark ploughland has furrowed
With bullets it has sowed as well
by bright body soil is loosen, hey, hey,
by bright body soil is loosen
with blood rinsed as well
brave man lays down on the hill, hey, hey,
brave man lays down on the hill
his eyes covered with blue silk…
Ukrainian folk song ed. Mykhailo Maksymovych (1834)
a new day opens its jaws
to swallow us up
and we stuff it
with crushed reinforced concreat
and we laugh laugh laugh
we sing at the burials of other people’s dreams
we make spells over bombs
we dance in the phosphorus rain
we invent a new language
because there is lack ow words in this one
no words for telling the truth
about all that we lived through
about everything that was felt
and the most important
words about all that we don’t feel anymore.
all the words are gone
time to compose some
water absorbs sound
the pain consumes us
pebbles in hand
ring softly
like children’s laughter
pebbles sink into the ground
pebbles grow deep
to the ancient roots
well that is it
time has come
let the sleepwalking memory
wake up
let the shadows of forgotten ancestors
wake up
let the heavy song come up
through our throats
for those who have fallen on the field of battle
find their way home
for those who have fallen on the field of battle
stay with us
forever
***
If he is a god of wrath, then I long
God’s blessing
Let him sing his hymn
Trampling the flag of humility
Smearing blood on his left cheek
He speaks to us without words
There is no right cheek left completely missed
There are visible only broken pieces of teeth
Through the wounded silence
You can hear his wheezing sick horn
And the soul convulses
When it seems that the soul is gone
b. 1977 in Ivano-Frankivsk, studied in Kharkiv. Ukrainian musician, poet, actor, leader of “Orkestr Che” project, participant in “Mantry Kerouaca”, “Liniya Mannerheima” etc.
If I had braids long from here to there
So long to pull out people alive
From catacombs, ruins and shelters
So tight to fasten the braids on the hangmen’s necks,
So thick to muffle the songs of cannons with them,
So strong to tie demons to the pillars.
So solid to hide in them all big and smalls
So dark that the killers drowned in their fog.
If I only had magic braids like that
To make you come back alive to my side.
b. 1981 Astrakhan region, USSR. Ukrainian singer, journalist, composer, poetess, producer, frontwoman of the bands “Krykhitka Tsakhes” and “Krykhitka”, member of the National Public TV and Radio Company.
Sky was dripping with tears
Dew
And was snowing with white
Bloom
If you feel such a deep
Need
Melt to water the ice between
Ribs
If you have in your hand
Heat
Make warmer somebody’s
Thoughts
Carry in yourself
Inside
Suns and the living
Stars
Shine yourself as long as
Shines
Love in your own
Eyes
You have to teach each other
Love
Like teaching prayers to
Kids
member of missionary Christian women order named Congregatio Sanctissimi Redemptoris
Mutilated blossom
Guilty of nothing
Will remain in buds in your eternity
Which tree will wind pick fruits
If fire burns the blossom
And world will disappear in germ of hopes
I’ve tried to speak up high
The words are heavy hard – the words come back
Here grew our garden up. It wasn’t paradise. So what?
Still our kids were bubbling there
Birds were flying in between the branches and the blues
They didn’t know it hurts so much
And it can hurt much more
Oh perfect golden circle
Is the blossom genuinely indifferent for thou?
Really, can it be replaced in nature
One human being to another?
Even so simple creature
but it’s unique, it wants to live
These twigs to the wind I throw
And hope, at least through the wind those twigs will grow
***
They didn’t ask for anything else, only cigarettes and energy drinks
She handed them cigarettes and energy drinks, and then blamed herself
For obeying, it is so risky to hand it and it is so unhealthy.
None of them died of an ulcer or a stroke, you know
None of them died of heart disease,
None of them fell asleep in the middle of the battle,
Everyone was conscious until he took the last drag on a cigarette
They left her sleepless
With an unhealthy habit of crying
b.1974 in Lviv. Ukrainian poetess, literary scholar, translator, member of National Writers’ Union of Ukraine.
Woman left dazed by a foreign sea
Her hair in mess, her sneakers damaged by walking too long,
She whispers a name with weathered lips
Locals think: the woman has lost her husband
But I’ve heard the name she is calling
This is not the name of a man, nor the child
She is standing by the sea and she calls the sea
But the sea although thinks she has lost her husband
Sea do not answer for calling it by the name unfamiliar, strange
Only bringing the shells and sharp stones
Only whispers in its own way, in sea language:
Hey woman, he will get back to you,
Your Azov.
(1986-2023), Ukrainian writer, a winner of the Joseph Conrad Literary Award, she was injured during the Russian attack
on Kramatorsk and died.
July…
dead bodies give off a malodorous stink
forgotten abandoned useless
they’re so close to our trenches
they smell if they could they would scream and howl
just as pets locked up inside somebody’s apartments howl
days and nights
out of despair and loneliness
in fact the greatest achievement of the war
is to stand this odor after all
it is spread everywhere in the sky on the ground in the past and
the future at the bottom of the blindages and in passing of
the artillery shells overhead
tank gets armor damage by this smell and even
the words get hit so deeply when I text home that
I have to explain it is not my body odor
that’s the stink of the dead nearby
of course I smell like that and at least I seem like that
but I am not yet the source of this stink
it seems that only dead can withstand this stench
they are the real heroes of the war
nobody else can
we step back to another positions we
stayed so long whole three days
and four nights
at the bottom of this stench
but we are alive
or maybe not exactly
you have to die to drink to the bottom
relive your own scents of despair memories
fears and thoughts
tomorrow the enemy will go on the offensive
enemy will leave his dead in front of our
trenches
and everything will start again
a new cycle
of new battles
of new sufferings
August…
***
The landscape of the peaceful forest usually changes
Slow
In this leisureliness located the epicenter of peace
And relaxed stability
If I wanted
Our relationship
Were like this forest
Pine forest
At least smell like it
How hard I wish
that at least one of us would survive this war
b. 1976 in Kyiv. Ukrainian sacred art painter, art
critic, poet and novelist, author of the Icons on Ammo Boxes art project (cooperation with
Sofia Atlantova).
And when she cries “I don’t know who I am anymore”,
Throwing a sheaf of fire from her eyes,
I write on her collarbones “You’re alive like a fir needles,
You’re thorny like a stubble. And soft like a clay.
I want to write on her: “You’re both a rear and a weapon,
You’re a wound and a bandage, a doctor and a blade, you’re pain.
You’re all – an apple, Helen of Sparta, a throne, and Troy.
You’re Donbas and sweet salt of the Ukrainian fields.
You’re both a blood and a hemostatic. Prison and freedom.
You are water and ground. You are a speech and lips. All…
You’re deep dark mourning when buried forever.
You are shining white faith when pregnant is…
You’re a cross-stitch on blouse embroidery and you’re a grave cross
And you’re a cross pendant, that protects from enemy shots…
You are life. Do you understand it? You’re life goddess!
Send this life to Our Soldiers!
First – to the frontline.
To the field...”
***
When you are happy
That except of drones
Missiles
jets
“Shaheds”
May bugs still fly
Spring during the war
War during the spring
Feels like sleeping
b. 1992 in Khmelnytskyi. Ukrainian poetess,
member of National Writers’ Union of Ukraine,
Yoga teacher.
