Ukrainian Poem of War Translated by Katherine E. Young

"Ukraine’s Iya Kiva (b. 1984) is no stranger to war. In 2014, the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine saw a Russian-backed incumbent ousted from Ukraine’s presidency; soon after, Russia forcibly annexed Crimea. Kiva’s hometown of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine also became a battlefield. A number of Kiva’s friends and acquaintances perished, while Kiva was personally threatened for speaking out about the war and forced to flee her home.

Not surprisingly for a poet who has spent most of the last eight years as a war refugee, themes of memory, violence, trauma, and borders/transitions run through Kiva’s poems."

The Year of Ukraine

see here we got what we wanted
now Serhiy Nigoyan’s graffiti on the wall
in the square across the way kids play at war
in Donbas the adults are also at play [...]