A strange people

You can pretty much bank on the fact that for National Poetry Month this year I’ll be exploring Ukrainian poets, so let’s get this show on the road.

Today’s entry is from Serhiy Zhadan, a writer (novelist playwright and poet) who was born in Luhansk Oblast in 1974, when the country was still part of the Soviet Union. His academic work was focused on the Ukrainian Futurist movement, and his early poems reflected their style. Last month the Polish Academy of Sciences nominated him for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

This poem is from a 2019 collection, so not about this particular Ukrainian-Russian conflict. But of course he has plenty of those to choose among. And, since he lives in Kharkiv and is currently there organizing humanitarian aid in the face of Russian attacks, this could well be applicable.

A bridge used to be there, someone recalled,
before the war:
an old pedestrian bridge.
The patrol passes every five hours.

Evening will be dry and pleasant.
Two older guys, and a young one.
He read twilight like a book,
rejoice, he repeated to himself, be joyful:
you’ll still sleep
in your bed today.

Today you’ll still wake up in a room
listening carefully to your body.
Today you’ll still be looking at the steel mill
standing idle all summer.

Home that is always with you like a sin.
Parents that will never grow older.
Today you’ll still see one of your people,
whomever you call your people.

He recalled the city he’d escaped from,
the scorched terrain he searched by hand.
He recalled a weeping man
saved by the squad.

Life will be quiet, not terrifying.
He should have returned a while ago.
What could happen to him, exactly?
What could happen?

The patrol will let him through,
and god will forgive.
God’s got other things to do.

They all were killed at once—both older guys,
and the young one.
Silence between the riverbanks.
You won’t explain anything to anyone.

The bomb landed right between them—
on that riverbank
closer to home.

The moon appeared between clouds,
listened to the melody of insects.
A quiet, sleepy medic
loaded the bodies into a military truck.

He quarreled with his stick shift.
Sought the leftover poison in a first-aid kit.
And an English-speaking observer
expertly looked at the corpses.

Even tan.
Nervous mouth.
He closed the eyes of the young one.
He thought to himself: a strange people,
the locals.