Three wartime poems

by Natalka Marynchak

Translated from Ukrainian by Lada Kolomiyets

and each of us will have a separate war
disheveled personal
everyone needed a wall
one’s own wall
to endure 
the wall of the varsity the palace of industry the city council 
the wall that in your imagination is the center of the universe
the center of your personal rockfall
the place of strength 
the place of your fall
the place of your awareness and sufferance
the place where you were born and died
by death trampling death

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 

***

our embroideries
are like notches red on the bare flesh     
like the wounds cut by glass
by fragments of iron
by pieces of concrete
look right here is a little bird 
bloody-red 
a shell hit right near me 
the hit my great-grandmother remembers 
here’s a stitch of black 
such a long furrow
of the black burn of black turned earth
my great-great-grandmother’s black longing
for my own longing

and over there my roots speaking
above the slashed red 
over the burnt black 
as over a mutilated and murdered body
we’ll plant the best 
the most painful flowers 
and I resist awhile
then take a thread and a needle
and start embroidering

here is my land
this is my long journey 
this is a hill in flowers
this is the water we had to make sure we stocked 
this is the melted snow that we drank
this is the fire that gave us life
this is my blood 
reaching the old world
this is my body
leaning over

O Lord
I will keep on 
stitching 
all the pains my people
have lived through
are all strung on this thread
here’s a red mark of my unbowed will
here’s a black mark of my strength 
and all my victorious flowers
that can cover up both the earth and the heart
with their delicate petals 
thin shoots soft stems 
gossamer scrims 
strong ribs

***

instead of the bibles and psalters we hold our telephones
which reveal to us all the signposts and all the roadblocks
and we pray clutching a piece of plastic and metal 
muffling our abyssal groans and recollections
in the middle of brushwood days 
instead of bread and wine we long for hardtack and drinking-water
save me and my freedom
from every corner
from every scaffold 
from every phone
save me O Lord
because I will stand here until the end 
holding this city's line of defence 
holding the shield over this place 
who are you He asks
but I don’t know what to say
I am the one who cannot sleep nor eat
I am the one who finds the light in places
where it is dreadful to stand or sit anywhere to rest
I am the one who collects oneself and goes there
the one who loves too much 
this factory this country this city