ProEnglish Theatre

Our new powerful friend HETMAN released an NY greeting video to ALL Ukrainians. We have the same vision in the messages he shares. Watch the video and share it with your Ukrainian and International friends. It has English and Ukrainian hardsubs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT0NFB_v9A0 І - also - Happy New Year, everyone!

In memory of Mariupol

.

I am a poet who writes invisible verses
for my murdered readers

I am standing and reading my new poetry on the stage
of the Mariupol drama theater,
completely destroyed
by the russian missile strike

I am standing on the stage that
no longer exists
it’s not a stage - it’s a mass grave,
under it

buried alive, lie thousands of
men, women, and their children -

the dead, the living, and the unborn

War is the orchestra pit of poetry
And its invisible art resonates
piercing us all with shrapnel
tearing up the bodies of books and the humans who read them

the art of war resonates so loud
no applause could drown it

The music of the art of war
comes from the russian tanks and artillery throats

and my Ukrainian poetry
is a mere song of despair that aspires to be louder
than the explosions of their empire

louder than the threnoses of the massacre
louder than the silence of the dead
louder than the numbness of the living

My poetry aspires to be
louder than the sympathies of the safe world
louder than the silences of citizens in the peaceful continents
where there have been no war for centuries

louder than the quietude of those looking at us from the other side of the border
those enjoying safety on the other side of freedom and looking
at a lost poet who is reading verses on the bombed-out stage
in a city that no longer exists
but is still marked on the maps of the world that is also gone for good now -
all the planet has perished
all the planet has perished in my country -
under the russian air bombs

to the last drop

You are the spectators looking at the stage of the drama theater
in the city of Mariupol
from under the stage, the choir of thousands buried alive in rubble is singing
you are listening to the voices of those I speak common blood language with -
I wear my soul with
I talk my pain through

and you think:
this is the poetry
this is the entertainment
this is a toy one can play with even then
when it is lying in a puddle of blood in the square
of a bombed-out railway station - that was
the only hope to survive

I am standing and reading my new poetry on the stage
of the Mariupol drama theater,
but these are no longer verses

This is the manifestation of a black symphony of genocide
coming through the voice of a Ukrainian poet

It’s the only poetry that can resonate
from the orchestra pit of war

To later be covered in the ashes of silence
.
.
Original (in Ukrainian): https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19WGXyHeai/

(c) Olrna Herasymyuk