These seagulls over the battlefield

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Preface xiii
4. Introduction: “Barometers” xix
5. ANASTASIA AFANASIEVA
6. she says we don’t have the right kind of basement in our building 2
7. You whose inner void 4
8. from Cold 6
9. She Speaks 8
10. On TV the news showed 11
11. from The Plain Sense of Things 12
12. Untitled 14
13. Can there be poetry after 17
14. VASYL HOLOBORODKO
15. No Return 20
16. Fly Away in the Shape of a Dandelion Seed 21
17. The Dragon Hillforts 22
18. I Pick up my Footprints 24
19. BORYS HUMENYUK
20. Our platoon commander is a strange man 28
21. These seagulls over the battlefield 30
22. When HAIL rocket launchers are firing 33
23. Not a poem in forty days 36
24. An old mulberry tree near Mariupol 39
25. When you clean your weapon 41
26. A Testament 42
27. YURI IZDRYK
28. Darkness Invisible 48
29. Make Love 49
30. ALEKSANDR KABANOV
31. This is a post on Facebook, and this, a block post in the East 52
32. How I love — out of harm’s way 53
33. A Former Dictator 54
34. He came first wearing a t-shirt inscribed “Je suis Christ” 55
35. In the garden of Gethsemane on the Dnieper river 56
36. A Russian tourist is on vacation 57
37. Fear is a form of the good 58
38. Once upon a time, a Jew says to his prisoner, his Hellenic foe 59
39. KATERYNA KALYTKO
40. They won’t compose any songs 62
41. April 6 63
42. This loneliness could have a name, an Esther or a Miriam 65
43. Home is still possible there, where they hang laundry out to dry 66
44. He Writes 68
45. Can great things happen to ordinary people? 70
46. LYUDMYLA KHERSONSKA
47. Did you know that if you hide under a blanket and pull it over your head 74
48. How to describe a human other than he’s alone 75
49. The whole soldier doesn’t suffer 76
50. A country in the shape of a puddle, on the map 77
51. Buried in a human neck, a bullet looks like an eye, sewn in 78
52. that’s it: you yourself choose how you live 79
53. I planted a camellia in the yard 80
54. One night, a humanitarian convoy arrived in her dream 80
55. When a country of — overall — nice people 81
56. Leave me alone, I’m crying. I’m crying, let me be 82
57. the enemy never ends 83
58. every seventh child of ten — he’s a shame 84
59. you really don’t remember Grandpa — but let’s say you do 85
60. BORIS KHERSONSKY
61. explosions are the new normal, you grow used to them 88
62. all for the battlefront which doesn’t really exist 89
63. people carry explosives around the city 90
64. way too long the artillery and the tanks stayed silent in their hangars 91
65. when wars are over we just collapse 92
66. modern warfare is too large for the streets 93
67. My brother brought war to our crippled home 94
68. Bessarabia, Galicia, 1913–1939 Pronouncements 94
69. MARIANNA KIYANOVSKA
70. I believed before 100
71. in a tent like in a nest 101
72. we swallowed an air like earth 102
73. I wake up, sigh, and head off to war 103
74. The eye, a bulb that maps its own bed 104
75. Their tissue is coarse, like veins in a petal 105
76. Things swell closed. It’s delicious to feel how fully 106
77. Naked agony begets a poison of poisons 107
78. HALYNA KRUK
79. A Woman Named Hope 110
80. like a blood clot, something catches him in the rye 111
81. someone stands between you and death 112
82. like a bullet, the Lord saves those who save themselves 113
83. OKSANA LUTSYSHYNA
84. eastern europe is a pit of death and decaying plums 116
85. don’t touch live flesh 117
86. he asks — don’t help me 118
87. I Dream of Explosions 119
88. VASYL MAKHNO
89. February Elegy 122
90. War Generation 123
91. On War 124
92. On Apollinaire 125
93. MARJANA SAVKA
94. We wrote poems 128
95. Forgive me, darling, I’m not a fighter 129
96. january pulled him apart 130
97. OSTAP SLYVYNSKY
98. Lovers on a Bicycle 134
99. Lieutenant 136
100. Alina 137
101. 1918 138
102. Kicking the Ball in the Dark 139
103. Story (2) 141
104. Latifa 143
105. A Scene from 2014 144
106. Orpheus 145
107. LYUBA YAKIMCHUK
108. Died of Old Age 148
109. How I Killed 149
110. Caterpillar 150
111. Decomposition 152
112. He Says Everything Will Be Fine 154
113. Eyebrows 155
114. Funeral Services 156
115. Crow, Wheels 158
116. Knife 160
117. SERHIY ZHADAN
118. from STONES
119. We speak of the cities we lived in 164
120. Now we remember: janitors and the night-sellers of bread 164
121. from Why I am not on Social Media
122. Needle 166
123. Headphones 168
124. Sect 169
125. Rhinoceros 171
126. Third Year into the War 173
127. Three Years Now We’ve Been Talking about the War
128. A guy I know volunteered 174
129. Three years now we’ve been talking about the war 176
130. So that’s what their family is like now 178
131. Sun, terrace, lots of green 179
132. The street. A woman zigzags the street 181
133. Village street – gas line’s broken 182
134. At least now, my friend says 183
135. Thirty-Two Days Without Alcohol 185
136. Take Only What Is Most Important 187
137. Traces of Us 189
138. Afterword: “On Decomposition and Rotten Plums: Language of War in Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry” Polina Barskova 191
139. Authors 198
140. Translators 204
141. Glossary 212
142. Geographical Locations and Places of Significance 215
143. Notes to Poems 222
144. Acknowledgements 233
145. Acknowledgement of Prior Publications 235
146. Index 237