From the Chief Editor, Bohdan Nahaylo:
Kyiv Post does not usually publish poems and other literary works. But in these challenging times when Russia has inflicted its barbaric war on Ukraine we welcome all forms of solidarity.
We are pleased to inform you that Dr Mario Petrucci, Royal Literary Fund Fellow, BBC Radio 3 poet in residence, and Imperial War Museum poet in residence, has written to us offering us “something both topical and compelling, a poem to rally public feeling,” adding “We are with you.”
We thank the distinguished British poet and are honoured to publish the poem he has sent us to share with you.
In Kyiv
I met a young man
in whose eyes water becomes fire
the kind
with sharp features
worked with dark & a pleasing heart
the kind
that would have
been sent to the front in an ill-fitting uniform
or to the mines
without boots without books
– all the bright-eyed boys not yet
grown into
their fathers’ suits
snuffed by a gust history sends every once
in the struggle
of men though it is not
history that sends – the type who
would have held
his post before
a bullet found its home in his soft mind
drying the lakes
of his eyes – ah
but he is also the one who today they
haven’t yet
put a stop to – whose
eyes begin to build a tiny palace
from upturned
stones of waking sleep – who
lives & breathes water,
whose words
breathe softest fire – who
sleeps & breathes
&
lives
Mario Petrucci, London,
Royal Literary Fund Fellow, poet in residence at Imperial War Museum London
