March 2022
Poets have always responded to war by writing poetry — it’s what we do. Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24th February this year people started sending The Friday Poem their poems about the war — poems about resistance, poems of protest, and poems about specific individuals affected by the fighting. These are stories of courage, grief and hope. We decided to publish some every week as Friday Poems for Ukraine. Here’s ‘March 2022’ by Becky Cullen. Slava Ukraini!
March 2022
Today I am looking at the ticker tape of trauma
we used to call the news
and it makes me think of Russian films
like that sequence
when a pram is falling down the steps
and I think about the people working in TV
on the only opposition channel
playing Swan Lake as their final broadcast which
in the last days of the Cold War
was their first
and the people working on the radio
on the only opposition channel
huddling in the corridor before heading home alone
and the people in the string section
of the Siberian State Symphony Orchestra
whose tour is cancelled and how the world is poorer
without their second violins
and the people leaving fearing martial law
and the teachers I met from Moscow State University
whether Oleg’s son is safe
if Irina who presented me with a shawl
embroidered with roses like a mouth of petals
has lost her singing voice
