War Language (Poem)

War Language

 . . . poetry is not merely a description of an event;

it is an event. 

~ Ilya Kaminsky*

The threat is not speaking

Russian but watching

the tanks lay down

rough tracks in Ukraine.

Already, they've chewed up

the borders of Kharkiv,

spit on the words

from the City of Poets.

Every bullet becomes another

man's eye, every mortar

one more crushing blow

to the head, no body

with the time to argue

one side before the other.

There are shoes in the streets

of Kharkiv, feet herding

to shelter, children in pink

snow suits handed off

to strangers for safekeeping,

the speech of goodbye tears

breaking the silence

that follows the shelling.

Occupied and occupier

cleave the meaning

of war in Kharkiv, 

 

break it down

into fragments of sound —

one, the whistles of rockets;

one, the louder testimony of loss.

 

#StandWithUkraine

 

* Epigraph quoted from and poem inspired by Ilya Kaminksy, "Ilya Kaminsky on Ukrainian, Russian, and the Language of War", Literary Hub, February 28, 2022, as excerpted from Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine (Academic Studies Press, 2017), Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky, Eds.