“Carry Her, Round as the Globe”: Three Poems of War in Ukraine

Ukrainian-American poet Vasyl Makhno offers three poems on the war in Ukraine, translated by Olena Jennings, Luba Gawur, and Jaroslaw Anders.

By Vasyl MakhnoJune 30, 2022

As the war in Ukraine continues, I continue to write poems about it, not because I really want to, but because we are now living with a new vocabulary. With certainty we can echo Theodor Adorno and say that poetry after Bucha and Mariupol is impossible — but in poetry, the impossible is possible. Crime, destruction, and unjustified death infuse tragedy into our words, changing their musical register. The paramedics from Mariupol that carry a wounded pregnant woman on a stretcher and the murdered residents of Bucha become metaphors, which people need to learn by heart. And what can we read in the depths of children’s eyes who escaped with their parents from their cities? Is it the feeling of collective responsibility that poetry attempts to impart to us?

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Exodus

 in the east smoke and ruins

refugees with children:

a missile lands

a siren screams in the darkness

people storm the stations

trains — the scraping of suitcases

a huge exodus to the west

full of children’s tears

golden Sophia all the way

to the Golden Gates

hope don’t leave us

let our legacy and people survive

everyone who returns

will be welcomed to their native home

and our fierce hatred will be

like a sword thrust into the ground

if they will weep

if they will shake with rage

let the music of our loss

pour into our trumpets and our spirit

because these images of children

through train windows

we can’t and will not forget

this is how war looks

on Sophia’s square — close to

Bucha and to Brovary

it seems to be that Khmelnytskyi

is angered by the shelling

For how can you Bohdan-Zynoviy

stay on your horse

when our lines are being attacked

and our cities are on fire?

Translated from Ukrainian by Olena Jennings

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From Mariupol                                                                    

To survive a night in Mariupol

Under the cracked cupola of sky

Beneath the shattered building

In this life on another shore

Who could have known what would happen in March

And who would not survive it?

With these sloping fields

With those whose time is due for childbirth

Who held on with the last of their strength

Smells of blood and smells of urine

The mother-to-be is placed on a stretcher

Paramedic, carry her somewhere

Go on, carry her, round as the globe

Shelling is all around … with every

Step, she hears the fruit of her womb grow

Dim … and she is also floating аway

And the earth recedes and the blood ebbs …

So why are you silent, Paramedic?

Are you stunned by the strikes? The shelling?

Where is this mother and where is this son?

You are also trembling for under their helmets

“they truly have no shame”

And you have exhausted your strength

Our dead have no shame   

I will shout in all directions

Speak not of shame to the enemy

They have killed a mother and son

Assaulted clinics and hospitals

And you … well, scurry alongside the buildings

Run, paramedic, along the street

The veins on your neck are throbbing

Carry on, maybe your rescue will succeed

Of this birthing mother and her son

For his first bath …

If I am rushing you — forgive me

Translated from Ukrainian by Luba Gawur

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Psalm for Bucha

we will never summon them again

with a question mark or the vocative

case that we have

those with arms broken and twisted

who lie in the streets of Bucha

in yards rotting in the rain

a black raven will watch over them

with an eye as black as the enemy

or a cherubim will embrace them

let my poem be their psalm

for Andriy Petro Oksana

sang solo and in a choir

let the missing conjunctions

make you better see Bucha

and hear the bell of terror

let a cherub in camo fatigues

show you pillars and joists

and a shattered pockmarked wall

let him remember all by their names

every word in this psalm

like a world buried in clay

that yesterday breathed under pines

and looked into a dog’s eyes

under the August rain of stars

I don’t know how sorrowful

my sorrow must be in this psalm

and what more words one needs?

Bucha strapped with tape and shot

the beast that came upon us

with ten horns and seven heads

facing these passions and the Passion

Week we are with Taras …

over Andriy Petro Oksana

who float through the sky in chariots

and with sobs loud like a bell

honor Bucha with a psalm

Translated from Ukrainian by Jaroslaw Anders