Everyone should write a spring poem, Louise Gluck
Perpetually repeating spring
in the azaleas on my street,
lush parade of parables
I can’t decipher yet,
configuring, configuring—
Why are you given to me
this black morning, the little hearses
lining my soul already parked,
ready for ascent or explosion
depending on my grip
on this blossoming,
my unasked-for gift?
Among the ways many in North America are seeking to support Ukraine is by supporting its cultural work: Ukrainian artists, writers, and keepers of cultural and historical artifacts. One such artist is Tatiana (Tania) Yurchenko. A self-taught artist with a background in botany, Yurchenko has long created botanical drawings to relax, depicting local plants and flowers, some of which are symbolic for Ukraine. Among those images shared here are her botanical drawings of the marigold and the sunflower.
Here nothing moves, the water
waiting, still as glass, amid
the cattails’ silent stalks while
over there across the sea,
fire shreds the sky, exploding as
buildings crumble, mired in
blood.
So how to hold the all of it,
the killing field and this spring
pool where water shivers once
and wakes to wood frogs’ rising
croaking chorus that, startled
by my presence, stops—only
to begin again.
He carries the hesitant masculinity of Twilight’s Edward Cullen in his body.
Millions of unknown species in our oceans inhabit a universe of storytelling and dreaming.
If a lion roars, who does not tremble? (Amos 3:8)
if a bomb
falling
in the poem
explodes
will it
be heard
amidst
lines
words
and no metaphor
worthy
of its actuality
come now
let us
together
in chorality
summon
the names
above the noise
names
never again mute
Mariupol
Donetsk
Luhansk
Kharkiv
Zhytomyr
Berdychiv
Chornobyl
Christ comes, a knock on the door when I least
expect him. Espresso in hand I pop open
the screen door that sticks in every kind
of weather. Peace be with you, he breathes
as he brushes by, sniffing for toast,
an egg, some fish. We eat our breakfast
in the too-small nook, our four knees
touching beneath the table. We find
little to discuss, though lots has happened
over the last two thousand years,
disaster since he last appeared
become our daily bread. His lined
face says he knows what we don’t say.