Inside us: a piece of

sky, blue and rusty,

smelling of winter and

gunpowder.

Who will see us as we crawl, chasing

the shadows of the clouds?

She reanimates the land.

The bombs, and bullets, and bodies took

its breath away and send it straight into cardiac arrest.

The scars of war are on her palms and tongue,

but she keeps going because without the land,

her heart will stop, too. 

Land—земля—zemlia: a greenplace, a birthgiver, our bread.

She puts her hands around it and tries to close off

the wounds of horror and destruction and

deathdeathdeathdeath

that the inhumans opened with their hungry teeth.

Sometimes, when the blood stops rushing through her ears

or between her fingers,

she hears the echo of “brotherly nations,” “local misunderstanding,”

“child actors.”

The land moans under the weight of 

countless bones.

We carry no

prophecies under our skin.

The silent sky 

floods our mouths.

Who will hear us climb up

the lifeless mushrooms?

He rebuilds the house. 

A new foundation in place of his ancestors’ 

home built with tears. The missile took

the walls, but the kitchen table is still

standing in the middle.

House—будинок—budynok: a warm place, a safehold, our nest.

He drinks tea at the kitchen table.

One year anniversary, 

he feels the explosions

reverberating through his ribs.

His daughter would have turned three.

His wife would have put a pot of

lilacs by her crib.

He drinks tea at the kitchen table of a murdered house.

It’s hot and bitter, and for a minute, he forgets

a new future of new houses with 

no one inside.

Everything we wanted

was in the sound

of the sky without

the stench of corpses.

Who will remember us if

the task ahead will take a generation?

They reconstruct their homeland.

Too many questions, too little time: where

do they fit between now and then;

how do they embezzle millions yet fight corruption

as never before; what are dignity and justice and fairness

if the debris of a shelled hospital hide 

the broken pieces of mothers and newborns.

Homeland—Батьківщина—Bat’kivschyna: a free place, a seeing glass, our hope.

They won’t live to see it without blood and tears

soaking its black ground. How do they repair machine-gunned hearts?

How do they rebuild a cracked-open sky?

They reconstruct their homeland as the bombs

try to bring them to their knees. Too many

questions, too little time. But the question,

“Will we live?” is not one of them.

Millions of hands breaking the chains

shout the answer louder than 

air raid sirens.

Inside us: a whisper

of summer, when sunflowers

grow from the ash.

Who will catch the birds

pecking out a path between 

the sky and wheat fields?

No one. Our wings hold the glory of freedom.