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      • Sylvia Plath by Dr. Nidhi Mehta >
        • Chapter-1(Sylvia Plath)
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        • Chapter-3(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-4(Sylvia Plath)
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      • Prose Poems of Tagore by Dr. Bina Biswas >
        • Chapter-1(Rabindranath Tagore)
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        • Chapter-3(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-4(Rabindranath Tagore)
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      • Kazi Nazrul Islam by Dr. Shamenaz Shaikh >
        • Chapter 1(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 2(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 3(Nazrul Islam)
      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
        • Chapter 1(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 2(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 3(Kabir's Poetry)
      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-2 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions

​Poems by Yuliya Musakovska 

WORDS
 
Who said that words have no value now?
Our words that are being written in the air
with the incandescent iron of breath,
that strike like clotted blood on pale lips,
are cutting into the soil under our feet,
settling on our clothes and shoes
like dust from ruined homes.
 
Our words
are stretching to those dear to us – to everyone who is scattered
around the country’s map with bullet holes in it,
along the strong connecting wires attached to the heart,
along the tight ropes of lasting together.
How much we can love as one.
How much we can hate.
The words we put into a backpack
just before leaving.
The words we grab
to maintain who-knows-what kind of balance,
when the ground is kicked out from under our feet, like an unsteady stool.
The words we press to a gaping wound,
the torn tender belly of the teenage girl, safety.
 
Our words, hard and swollen with rage,
black from grief,
like the concrete covering of an old bomb shelter.
There is nothing more durable,
nothing less fleeting.
 
21.03.2022
 
Translated by Ella Yevtushenko and Olena Jennings
 
First published in Inkroci Magazine (Italy)
 
  
 
SAFE PLACE
 
Are you in a safe place? --
This sounds like a prayer,
repeated over and over since February 24, 2022
to loved ones and friends.
I‘m asking myself: am I in a safe place?
Could I be?
 
Could I be in a safe place
when my parents refuse to leave their home
but have no air-raid shelter beneath their apartment block?
The cellar that serves as one looks like it may
turn into a mass burial too quickly.
 
Could I be in a safe place
when my father, in cancer remission, is not able to walk quickly
to a school in the neighborhood
that has a proper air-raid shelter after all.
For those who can run, it takes about seven minutes
to get there.
What are his chances?
 
Could I be in a safe place
when my nearly blind grandfather can hardly descend
a staircase even if guided carefully,
with no rush.
He, who fought Nazis in World War II, is not afraid of today’s russian fascists.
He will outlive them all, he says.
Them, soon to lay in the fertile Ukrainian soil.
 
They haven’t bombed your city yet, some say.
You are in a safe place, stop whining.
Just air raid sirens several times a day
and probably at night.
Sometimes none at all, it is safe.
 
Could I be in a safe place
when my friends are under constant shelling in Kharkiv,
Sumy, Irpin, Bucha, unable to leave?
When my friend’s parents in Chernihiv are out of reach
for several days?
No more electricity, gas, or roads, they say.
Could I be in a safe place when 1300
have been killed in besieged Mariupol?
 
Today, in the city of Zaporizhya
the beasts
calling themselves russian soldiers
crashed a civilian car
with their tank.
 
A little boy burned to death.
 
Are you in a safe place?..
 
12.03.2022
 
First published in Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland), April 2022
 
 
 
 
METAPHORS
 
such awkward, terrible poems
soaked with rage,
controvertible
 
no beauty in them,
no aesthetics;
metaphors withered and scattered
deprived of blooming
 
metaphors buried
on playgrounds
under hastily made
crosses
 
frozen
in unnatural poses
across the thresholds,
strewn with dust
 
cooking food over an open fire
in attempt to survive
 
metaphors dying of dehydration
under the rubble
 
shot in a car
under a makeshift 
white flag
 
lying on the footpath 
with motley backpacks on their backs
 
next to their
executed pets
 
forgive me, but such poems
are all we have for you today,
ladies and gentlemen,
 
dear estimable spectators
in the theatre of war
 
31.03.2022
 
Translated by Anatoly Kudryavitsky
 
First published in the anthology "Invasion: Ukrainian Poems about the War", Dublin, Ireland, 2022
​
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Yuliya Musakovska is an award-winning poet, translator, and member of PEN Ukraine. She is the author of five poetry collections in Ukrainian, most recently The God of Freedom (2021). Her poems have been translated into several languages, including English, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian, Bulgarian,  Estonian, Chinese, and Hebrew. Yuliya is a translator of Tomas Tranströmer into Ukrainian and of contemporary Ukrainian poetry into English. She has received numerous literary awards, including Krok Publishing House’s DICTUM Prize, the Smoloskyp Poetry Award, and the Ostroh Academy Vytoky Award. She lives in the city where she was born, Lviv, Ukraine.


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​VerseVille (formerly The Enchanting Verses Literary Review) © 2008-2022    ISSN 0974-3057 Published from India. 

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  • Home
  • About Us
    • Contact
    • Media Coverages
    • Copyright Notice
    • VerseVille Blog
  • Submissions
    • Poetry and Essays Guidelines
    • Book Review Guidelines
    • Research Series Guidelines
  • Masthead
  • Editions
    • 2011 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XIV November 2011
    • 2012 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XV March 2012
      • ISSUE-XVI July 2012
      • ISSUE-XVII November 2012
    • 2013 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XVIII April 2013
      • ISSUE XIX November 2013
    • 2014 Issues >
      • ISSUE XX May 2014
    • 2015 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXI February 2015
      • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • 2016 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIII August 2016
      • Poetry From Ireland ISSUE XXIV December 2016
    • 2017 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXV August 2017
      • ISSUE XXVI December 2017
    • 2018 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXVII July 2018
      • ISSUE XXVIII November 2018
    • 2019 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIX July 2019
    • 2020 ISSUES >
      • Issue XXX February 2020
      • ISSUE XXXI December 2020
    • 2021 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXII August 2021
    • 2022 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXIII June 2022
  • Collaborations
    • Macedonian Collaboration
    • Collaboration with Dutch Foundation for Literature
  • Interviews
  • Prose on Poetry and Poets
    • 2010-2013 >
      • Sylvia Plath by Dr. Nidhi Mehta >
        • Chapter-1(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-2(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-3(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-4(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-5(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-6(Sylvia Plath)
      • Prose Poems of Tagore by Dr. Bina Biswas >
        • Chapter-1(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-2(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-3(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-4(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-5(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-6(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-7(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-8(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-9(Rabindranath Tagore)
      • Kazi Nazrul Islam by Dr. Shamenaz Shaikh >
        • Chapter 1(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 2(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 3(Nazrul Islam)
      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
        • Chapter 1(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 2(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 3(Kabir's Poetry)
      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-2 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions