My Dear Friends:
Today, marking the eve of the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I would like to share with you some of my poems for reflections on the impacts, personal and national, of Putin's War, under the "growing pressure of Ukraine fatigue:"
Independence
"Dear Chen-ou, I hope this email finds you well. Share with you my family photo, which was taken this glorious morning."
In the photo, my friend, his wife and two daughters, wrapping themselves in the flags of blue and yellow, stand with arms linked before a row of rusty Russian tanks on Liberation Square.
My friend used to be a Surrealist poet, known for his purposeful use of "obscure and unwieldy verbiage." He sent me the following poem at the end of his lengthy and furious email a week after the Russian invasion.
in smoky twilight
the head of I cut off
the roof of M falling through --
I paint poetry with screams,
the last phase of lyricism
His emails now are short and straight to the point, and often attached with photos to speak for his mood or state of mind, like the one he sent me today. Under his family photo, there is a caption that reads:
If Russia stops fighting, there will be no more war.
If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no more us.
no man's land
between barbed wire fences
the kraa-kraa-kraa
of ravens scratching
at the soldiers' hearts
Ribbons, 19:3, Fall 2023
FYI: This poem was inspired by both the Ukrainian resistance and Seamus Heaney's remark on poetry:
In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.
And Ls 4&5 of the first tanka allude to the following remark:
Miles away from poetry, we still participate in it by that sudden need to scream—the last stage of lyricism.
-- Romanian philosopher and essayist Emil Cioran, whose work has been known for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms
another year
amidst screaming sirens ...
sunflowers
on the bomb shelter wall
no longer noticed
air raid sirens ...
Ukraine is alive, Ukraine fights
again at sunrise
FYI: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's New Year Address: Ukraine is alive. Ukraine lives. Ukraine fights. Ukraine advances, Ukraine overcomes the path. Ukraine gains. Ukraine works. Ukraine exists. And all together, this is not a New Year's miracle, not a fairy tale, not magic, but the merit of each of you.
I would like to conclude today's Special Feature post on a personal note with the following tanka:
my Kyiv friends and I
tiptoe around the jagged edge
of sorrow
at last the silence
envelopes each of us
Chen-ou
FYI: LA Progressive, March 7, 2023: Don’t Forget the Private Sorrows of Ukraine
When we consider how important our own sorrows are to each of us, we should pause longer to reflect on all the deaths, maiming, and other tragedies that wars inflict.
The best quote I’ve discovered about war is from Ian McEwan’s novel Black Dogs (1993). His main character reacts to World War II in Europe:
He was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust…For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories.
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