Two wartime poems
by Olena Herasymiuk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Viktoria Ivanenk
I am standing on the stage that
no longer exists
it’s not a stage — it’s a mass grave,
under it
buried alive, lie thousands of
men, women, and their children —
the dead, the living, and the unborn
Three wartime poems
by Natalka Marynchak
Translated from Ukrainian by Lada Kolomiyets
everyone will have their own story
of broken paths and breathlessness
everyone will have their own defended territory
of roaring and laughing
I now have a heart
of reinforced concrete
it knows neither pity
nor comfort
Untitled (from "Stitches")
by Doina Ioanid
Translated from Romanian by Monica Cure
To be exposed to the harsh air, saturated and heavy with those who came before you. To come into the world as fog takes big bites out of the bark of birch trees and foxes hop around drunk.
K. 7:00
by Krista Szöcs
Translated from Romanian by Monica Cure
they say love will save me from the distances I can’t cross
the distance from here to many meters away measured in footsteps
love will also save me from tiresome fantasies
that inflate my ego and self-confidence
where is my ego and self-confidence?
In an attempt to escape my doubts & excerpts from the cycle "Pebbles"
by Vasyl Stus
Translated from the Ukrainian by Bohdan Tokarsky and Julius Kochan
If people carry on writing books
for another couple of centuries
then what will our descendants do?
What taught people to sharpen knives
was screams.
Sand Covered City
by Munawwar Abdulla
Elect a baby as king, why don’t you? I am
played in, loved in, traded in, not
fenced in. Nor do walls protect me.
Perhaps the desert does.
