Svitlana Povaliaieva presents four poems shaped by war, personal loss and the deaths of her two sons while serving in Ukraine’s armed forces.
Timothy Snyder publishes four poems by Ukrainian poet Svitlana Povaliaieva on his blog.
Autumn in the sky…
Four Poems by Svitlana Povaliaieva
•••
Autumn in the sky, autumn in the air
In the wind September and a barefoot woman
wades out slowly against time
None of the shores echoes in her heart
One day to August
•••
One August day
You’ll slip from your stillness to the human shore
But find no words
Your wings will convulse
Autumn butterfly in a spiderweb
Sing
•••
When you sing in the shower
When you dance with your shadow in the kitchen
When you talk to the trees, the river, the animals
When you rush to throw off your shoes to go barefoot
When you laugh and cry with and against the wind
When you run to the flood with outstretched hands
When you climb so very very high and stop just before you leap
Because it seems to you that you can fly
Although you know that no you can’t fly
When you don’t remember when and how you do all this
When you suddenly become a book that isn’t you
•••
I’m a pilot,
I’m a ball,
I’m a woman, struck
deaf blind
until now a mother
and still one
so long as the force
of love and fury
holds up the world
and someone’s child
I’ll be a light
when I die.
•••Svitlana Povaliaieva (b. 1974) is a Ukrainian poet, journalist, and activist. Her two sons served in the Ukrainian armed forces after the full-scale Russian invasion of February 2022. Her younger son Roman Ratushnyi was killed in action that June. Her elder son Vasyl Ratushnyi was killed in action in February of last year. These four poems are published here in my translation with her permission.
Source: substack.com
English Edition