Poems for Ukraine
Poets have always responded to war by writing poetry — it’s what we do. These are some of the poems you have sent us about the war in Ukraine — poems about resistance, poems of protest, and poems about specific individuals affected by the fighting, all of them stories of courage, grief and hope.
Have you ever hated anyone enough by Sarah Mnatzaganian
March 2022 by Becky Cullen
Flag Iris by Karen Mooney
Streetparties by Nicholas McGaughey
Have you ever hated anyone enough
— Louise Glück, The Wild Iris
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
to ask an iris leaf to turn into a sword
sharp as the new moon, cold as a snowdrop,
irresistible as spring grass growing disorderly,
before it’s mown to match the wishes of one
demanding pair of eyes? Don’t lose focus.
Take one, narrow, curved iris leaf and hold it up.
If the heart you want to penetrate is hard enough
to steal a country and the lives from its people;
if that heart won’t learn the wisdom of the iris,
the snowdrop and the moon – that life is mutable –
then that heart will feel the leaf turn to steel
and, to grant your wish, will stop beating.
The iris will flower blue and yellow, as it should,
for the people returning to their country,
as they should, and there will be no blood
on your hands.
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
Flag Iris
Dug in, suppressed, yet holding on,
they build an underground network
from which they fight their way out.
Military green swords cut a swathe
to stand guard over the principals
whose lazuline folds encase a rising.
From darkness, they bring forth light,
unfurl to expose a core of ripened gold,
as they stake their claim to freedom.
Streetparties
“Bring a bottle! Bring a bottle,
for cocktails in the park!
The women make them good and strong
and throw them after dark.”
