16 Comments
May 4, 2022·edited May 4, 2022

For anyone interested in reading more of her poetry translated into English, you'll find four here. Three are translated from the Russian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk, and the fourth is translated from the Russian by Katherine E. Young. https://www.openhorizons.org/february-is-sobbing-and-the-candle-drips-on-the-table-iya-kiva-ukrainian-poet.html I especially like this one, from 2014: This coffin’s for you, little boy, don’t be afraid, lie down,

A bullet called life clutched tight in your fist,

We didn’t believe in death, look – the crosses are tinfoil.

Do you hear – all the bell towers tore out their tongues?

We won’t forget you, believe it, believe it, be …

Belief bleeds down the seam inside your sleeve,

Chants, prayers, psalms well up in a lump in your throat

In the middle of this damned winter all dressed in khaki,

And February, getting the ink, is sobbing.

And the candle drips on the table, burning and burning…

Expand full comment

thank you and gratitude to the poet and translator

Expand full comment

Thank you for this poem. I receive Literary Hub and there have been some fabulous conversations with Ukrainian writers/poets over these past weeks turned months. Also - another super essay in the online New Yorker April 28 - a snapshot of Ukrainian and Russian history and relationships over time. Just finished AGAIN The Road to Unfreedom, and I must say, reading it now after the 4 years of plague realize just how fraught everything was and not really feeling able to translate it at all into meaning. I told friends that even if they have not read the entire book they should at least read Chapter 6. Appreciate all you are doing to keep informing and teaching people about the times we are in. Lord knows, we all need some assistance as the forces of chaos continue to send tsunamis crashing toward shore daily.

Expand full comment

Brilliant...thanks Dr. Snyder...you bring life into dust and tears.....Linda

Expand full comment

Thanks, Tim.

Expand full comment

Вельми дякую! Слава Україні, Героям Слава! 🇺🇦

Expand full comment
May 4, 2022·edited May 4, 2022

On Swedish Radio today was the story of Filip Orlik who wrote, together with his wife Hannah, the first Ukrainian constitution in 1710, with the democratic feature of sharing of power. He was allied to the Swedish king Karl XII in the battle of Poltava, which ended in total victory for Russia. Orlik and his family were invited to join Karl XII back to Sweden. Strange to hear about a friend of Karl XII as a writer of a democratic constitution, but they were of course basically brother in arms against a common enemy. In Sweden we learn that the brutal autocracy of Karl XII was replaced by the new constitution of "Time of Liberty"; basically forcing the king to share his power with the aristocracy.

The original document of this first constitution of Ukraine has now been on display in Kiev. The people from the Swedish museum in charge of the document reported that they had never experienced such a vibrant importance of any other thing in their custody.

Expand full comment

what have you got there, brothers, -- ask our dead --

the history of a tribe with a dirty rag in its mouth

rotting chests filled with grandparents' and great-grandparents' lives

which we've carried for centuries as if shouldering the Carpathians

Expand full comment

Was ever there a war more needless or at greater cost

Expand full comment

Beautiful and very moving. The poem brought to my mind the devastation in the faces of the women and children evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in recent days. Slava Ukraini!

Expand full comment