~Ostap Slyvynsky
Ukrainian poet Ostap Slyvynsky for Poetry Friday:
Going east is like digging deep,
maybe the truth is we didn’t stop ourselves in time,
like a crazed mole who doesn’t notice
that its paws are burning, that toxic gold has replaced the darkness?
Have we failed geography, like a student in that textbook nightmare?
Have we begun building near the earth’s mantle, consoling ourselves that we’ll have free heating?
So what now? What will we do with our bedridden loved ones, with the ones
perpetually absent? Who, besides fire,
will want to pay us a visit? Maybe
it’s up to us, the crawling vines, to set roots for our homeland,
this off-market real estate,
this overheated wall, beside which we were born:
it’s up to you, brother-ivy, it’s up to you, fertile vine,
it’s up to you, climbing rose.
–Translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk.
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From A War Vocabulary: Displaced Ukrainians share fragmented stories of loss, trauma, and absurdity:
BEAUTY, Kateryna, Vyshhorod
I read a story about WWII not so long ago. There was this girl who wore her mom’s worst clothes to pass by the Nazis unnoticed, to avoid being raped. I pause near my wardrobe; is it time to wear the worst already, or can I still make it? Things change so quickly. The cabs are not coming. Either the line is busy or they refuse. I will just walk to Kyiv.
In a time of war, beauty becomes dangerous. Beautiful things, people, relationships—nowadays they don’t exist to inspire. They exist to be annihilated. Not for admiration and loving touches, but for pain.
My boots get stuck in the mud along the highway. My phone beeps with an SMS: “You have just visited our beauty parlor for a manicure. Please, leave a review.”
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Unexpected Intersections has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Elisabeth!
9 comments:
Just devastating, Tabatha. Thank you for making room for these voices, so important. I fear so much can be lost as news cycles move on, despite the realities continuing in real time.
Oh - this post just gave me chills. This line in the poem:
"Have we begun building near the earth’s mantle, consoling ourselves that we’ll have free heating?"
embodies so much truth about where humanity stands at the moment. And Kateryna's words made me want to weep - for the truth of her insights, and for the fact that a young woman considers the same strategy another one used to survive a different war less than 100 years ago.
Thank you for sharing these as an important reminder to those of us going about our lives in safety, that others are still living in a state of relentless conflict.
Tabatha, thank you. It is difficult to read these poems and these words. But, I feel strongly that we must bear witness. There's so little I can do with impact. But, I can read the words and bear witness. Thanks for the resources too.
Oof. Thank you for sharing Slyvynsky's poem and the BEAUTY excerpts, Tabatha. The manicure review request is as heartbreaking as it is absurd.
Thank you for sharing these poems this week Tabatha. The second poem about beautiful things reminded me of my blessings and the importance of protecting the ability to enjoy life. Thanks! -Tim
Wow, my heart hurts from these words… It rips me up inside for so much of my art and writing evolves from beauty and thoughts about it. I wish as I did in the beginning of the war, back in February it would all stop. I think the news ought to share poems and accounts like the ones you have here, thanks for all Tabatha.
May the poets continue to fling the seeds that will be the vines that will bind the country and its people and someday they all will bloom again.
Powerful stuff.
Oh, wow, Tabitha, beautiful and powerful and so hard and so true.
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