THE NEW YORK TIMES International Edition – The Poets of Ukraine’s war

Diary, Legnica. When I left the airport Amsterdam, Monday, 26 August 2024, I bought the newspaper The New York Times and kept it in my trolley. I did not read or look in it till 2 days later, sitting on the balcony of my hotel room. I was pleasantly surprised to read a very fine interesting article on Ukraine, indirectly war-related, but now with the focus on a new cultural event. There’s an unprecedented boom of poetry going on right now in Kyiv. I quote the journalist in Kyiv: “Battle-hardened artists pour emotions into verse and find a wide audience.” Here is an example, a little stanza of a prizewinning poet, 29.

Every time you want to be wrong
About the brightness of those eyes
The eyes of those who decided one day
To die in battle
Are always brighter than others

Yaryna Chornohuz
Ukrainian poet and combat medic, she won the Shevchenko National Prize, Ukraine’s highest arts and culture price.

The village with the name GNIEWOMIERZ – Swan’s Lake

Olga smiles, she is particularly proud to drive the Big New Car and hopes everybody in the village will see her in control behind the steering wheel, she drives slowly to demonstrate this sensational situation. How envious the old villagers will be when they see how well the Ukrainian woman, the poor refugee, is doing now after a punishing time of  isolation and lack of private transport.

There is just nobody in the village, nobody visible, nobody in the streets, no traffic, nothing, its looks deserted and its small, we have left the main street already, so we turn around and start another slow drive trough the village. There must be some-one alive. Or are they hiding? Like aliens afraid for daylight.

‘There’s a pigs farm,’ Ihor points at a farmer’s house next to a muddy field where I can see a few black fat pigs crawling in the dirt, I can smell them, funny, I like pigs, sensitive animals, but not when they are human. Ihor is in a good mood. ‘There’s a lake here, I will show you,’ he says.

We stop and park the car, we get out stretching our legs and walk to the lake. I can feel tension building up, the way Ihor and Olga are exploring the place. No watchdogs. For me it’s a surprise, we have come to a very romantic place, once there’s was a bar and terrace but now its empty deserted neglected unmaintained. The silence is like a horror-effect. This lake is full of fishes, but nobody may fish in it, they need a permission which they will never get because the owner of the lake is an anti-social entrepreneur.

Ihor points toward the centre of the lake, carpers splashing up to the surface and white swans with their for ever majestic posture are swimming in the corner. We sit down for a while, Olga takes pictures and I take a picture too, a house still under construction draws my attention, its not finished and probably destined to become a ruin in nearby future.

Olga’s photograph, she really likes taking pictures, uses photography as a medium of expression, looking for sparkling or sad moments. Ihor and me sitting on deserted terrace of the Swann’s Lake in village Gniewomierz, ponding on our own reminiscens.