Seven Ukrainian Poems, Issue 11: New Poems of 2025
Seven new poems from various authors, translated from Ukrainian by Victor Shepelev
This issue is somewhat different from the previous ones. First, it loses the “seven poems a week” promise (it was kinda artificial anyway; initially it was intended to be published every week, which turned out to be unreasonably hard). I am keeping the name “Seven Ukrainian poems” for now. Thus, it is not “week 11,” just “issue 11.”
Second, this issue presents poems not by one author but by many, mostly those already translated in this project, with a couple of exceptions. I just wanted to share some new texts they’ve written since then. In the future, issues dedicated to a single poet will probably alternate with such “compilations.” We’ll see.
Valeriy Puzik
Bee-Bee mouse
runs along my rifle again
hides
behind the body armour
peeks into the bag
no candies
no seeds
even the snickers is long gone
Bee-Bee mouse
peeks out again
looks for a hole
in the backpack
the backpack is new
no holes in it
but by the morning
inevitably
there will be
one
Bee-Bee mouse
hides in the winter
under the floor
of the house
into which today
the soldiers
have moved
she doesn’t understand now
why are they
running
the place
here
before
there was hay
as if prepared
for Christmas:
ding-dong
Virgin Mary
had a son
covered with hay
laid in a crib
the Son of God
sleep
Orikhiv disrict
Nov 14, 2025Yelyzaveta Zharikova
Those who start wars never think about new mothers about their babies stunned by the noise and the light about low hemoglobin and episiotomy stitches they don’t think about the right temperature and humidity that must be kept in the ward where burns of more than thirty percents of the body are treated about a teenager with long wide sleeves, one of them hiding a dialysis fistula about his mother and her prescriptions for a levothyroxine and an antidepressant about somebody’s, planned at midday of that day of that February, eutanasia for the old dog whom the family meeting decided not to torture anymore, to let go Those starting wars couldn’t care less about the lines to the low-price pharamacy about the problem of prescription-only painkillers about the search for a discount for chemo, bedsore medication, adult deapers about the first and the last breaths of human bodies about the first and the last about the helpless The one who starts wars may never have carried a child in his hands a child afraid of needles who, spotting a woman in glasses and a white coat, shuts his eyes and starts to whimper quetly The one who was starting the war shouldn’t have a body as the light of a body is fragile, warm, and painful but the one who had started the war should be opaque, metallic, cold like a draught between the green walls in a 90s hospital, like the monsters who visited the dreams of feverish children there What would think those who will end the war? — I asked myself, when I was handing over my first-aid post to my successor, and found at the bottom of one box pills for constipation and flatulence expired three months ago that I bought last year for a soldier but he, in a golden, warm, transparent autumn like this never returned from the mission never said: “Thank you, girl. I thought you’d forget about me, as usual.”
Eva Tur
I.
look, Lord, at the winged shadow
standing on the border
between the living and the resting.
his clothing is bright
like an archangel’s vestment
his face
is like an icon,
as ancient as the world
his brother is in front of him,
wearing an ochre shirt,
with a palm lowered toward the graves
where nobody hears the bells toll
and only the tired earth breathes
slowly and heavily
remember, Lord, crosses without names:
those worn to the core,
those grown one with moss,
those concealing children,
and having nobody to share
their grief with
among the graves, there is light:
not lost silver,
and not lit flames,
but glitter
fallen from the skies,
like rains,
with prayers
that never reached their target
don’t judge, Lord, those
who silently accepted their death,
as your messenger takes them quietly
and doesn’t ask
was one right,
was one forgotten,
was one loved?
give them rest
give us strength and fury,
and to those still standing at the border,
give their hearts sight, to see
an icon coming alive in the darkness
and cradling them, like a mother
in the time before death
come down, Lord, to the field
where crosses grow in two tiers
one above ground,
another below,
under the shroud of the unknowable
bow your face to those
whose ashes lie nameless,
messageless,
graveless.
mothers pray
not for survival,
but for a bone,
for a shard of a dog tag,
for a piece of body armor
remember, Lord,
the missing ones,
whose homes stand
under the strikes of shakheds and rockets,
their children grow up
not knowing where to say “dad,”
whose wives keep hoping
and peering into the frontline
on the map, like into a hymnbook,
though it moves further and further
from the probable location
of the most precious remains
the air is full of incense smoke,
and the hot smoke of explosions.
both sink the same way
onto faces,
onto clothes,
onto bones.
unheard prayers
lie like dust on skulls,
on collarbones
on small fragments of fingers,
gathered in a gesture
the meaning of which we’ll never know
and only glitter
glows among the graves
as if somebody spilled it
like God’s tears,
like sparks of hope,
like the remains of a happy life
in this nameless field
no banners,
no tridents,
no flags.
only an archangel in azure,
and a figure in ochre
standing before him
without fear,
without words,
with a hand over the ground,
as if asking:
write down mine, too
I see:
the angel leans
over the figure in bright clothes,
and the light, like salt in water
dissolves in their silhouettes
they stand
on the border
between golden halos
and black earth
where small crosses glow
like glitter at the bottom of deep water
or thick mist
spilled like milk
their eyes are silent
but between them
there is a sound
like the rustle of feathers,
like the smoke above a vigil light,
for the last breath
before a step into eternity
into the blood that had no time to cool
between the pulling of the trigger
and the falling of the body
between them, happens not a meeting
between them, hangs not a farewell.
those on the border know:
this crossing is eternal
and the two will never learn names,
jobs, ranks, or call signs,
for from primordial times they know:
all living
becomes memory already
in the moment
when time folds
into a thin vein
under the thick skin
of an indifferent world.
ІІ.
remember, Lord,
those not in the registries,
whose names
exist only on notebook pages
of their mother
who each day wraps the pages
in a napkin
so as to not smear them with the blood from the news
remember, Lord,
those taken by the river of the missing:
place of disappearance
not established,
circumstances unknown
also
remember the one
whose uniform dissolved in the rain
whose dog tag
caught in a time vortex
in Lyptsi?
in Bakhmut?
in Mar’yinka?
in Krynky?
in Vuhledar?
there is no place, no map,
only a voice
once in a few months
slipping into my dreams
to say:
“I am somewhere close,”
and then vanishing
into shreds of reports,
into a call without a number,
into a newly disappeared face
that somebody else is looking for
remember, Lord,
those who haven’t been found
and save those who, day after day,
still look
as without a grave
there is no rest,
no mourning,
no
“farewell”
but what is there?
the frontline
studied by women
like the Gospel:
each day a new reading,
a new report,
a new removal
from the most precious
what else?
dreams of a voice saying
“I am here,”
and leaving.
and there is no catching up
and there is no
calm waking
did You hear the prayers
that fell into the ground
and became dust on the skin
spreading in dreams?
the prayers
not heard by You,
lay worldwide grief
on bones,
on skulls,
on broken fingers.
and only glitter
glows among the graves
as if somebody spilled it
like God’s tears,
like sparks of hope,
like the remains of a happy life
III.
remember, Lord, the tortured ones
give them a shore
to come upon.
give us water,
to step into,
with despair
but without drowning
give us signs:
not loud,
but lingering
like an echo in damp caves,
like a gloss on a mirror,
like a bird’s song at dawn
give us a night,
that doesn’t fade
that lets us see
the glowing faces of those
who are not there
but are in our hearts
and when on that field
no figures remain
but the shadow of the archangel
who keeps silent on the hill
let this shadow
be enough
to not forget
what the road home
looks like
July-August ’25Yaryna Chornohuz
[the land of farewells]
This is a time when again
people are falling like
autumn leaves fall from the trees.
This is one more day
when I am struggling to reach
across the border with my loneliness.
(There, I might catch
a fallen leaf of your life.)
This is the dream that comes to me
for the seventh time in a row. In it, the young dead
become older and mature.
We sit in a bar and drink whiskey and wine.
They keep silent and look at me,
as if not believing their eyes.
As if saying:
“Don’t be afraid, no one needs this
but us.”
I will not forgive the enemy or all their generations
for those, one by one, “farewells.”
I remember the voices
of those who departed to the other side of the war autumn
my dear ones,
like an old actor remembers
even in his sleep, the monologues from the plays
he once performed on stage.
But I am not an actress.
I am a resident of the land of farewells.
I bid them every day
I’ve been bidding farewells for years and I’ll stop,
when I die. And even then, unlikely.
There, abandoning the shadows of doubts,
beyond the border, for many years
waits the one who, for this land,
is nobody.
The past here is the only thing alive,
the present can be grasped by no one,
the future is a riddle that doesn’t really exist
for it is only a word.
This is the land of farewells.
One more crimson leaf in the hair.
(from the book “Nobody’s Saffron”)Ihor Mitrov
cold home
І
who is this beast that howls at night
among villages betrayed, forsaken
its voice is a hand on the throat of an oaked mountain
its shadow is a road that only
once in a century a blind traveler walks
and vanishes, a butterfly in a black palm
ІІ
in this world where distances are measured by snowstorm wingspans
where corpses are warmer than all of the living together
where fingers are as cold as an indifferent woman’s loins
they are squeezing the throat and in the abyss of the guts
the scream of the sun is choking
one translucent morning
an ice beast will run to my doorstep
to scratch on the cold-throated door
let me open
I’ll be white
then transparent
then nothing
ІІІ
in this forest where the wind got lost forever
and the ants fled and no lichen grows
only you
you the old birch
your blood has no taste or color
even the land doesn’t want it
no bird
even wingless
will nest on your body
only rarely, from the thicket, comes
a person with graves for eyes
to drink your black-and-white life
IV
white frozen palms with millions of fingers
clench into a crystal fist
you will see it among the stars
the one and only
it reminds of the faces
of those who left
at the same time
in the same way
V
tomorrow morning
before the third call of the roosters
scares homeless dogs
before the sun rises
from its snowy grave
I will leave my cold home
I will turn into a wolf and run away to a black forest
I will turn into a forest
I will pierce the skies
and there will be blood
and women will cry in fright
I will turn into a woman
and seduce those who are awake
I’ll absorb the seed cold as snow
and bear dead children
tomorrow morning
I will be gone for good
leaving in this cold home
a pile of unseen dreamsYuri Solomko
I didn’t translate him previously. Yuri is an old literary friend from Kharkiv; I found him on Facebook just recently and learned he is serving in AFU now and still writes (beautiful) poems. One of the upcoming issues will be dedicated to his poetry.
1 before this war the cats were thoughtful and meek 2 before that winter the house dogs went into packs 3 after this war there will be dogs who changed two or three names 4 after that winter there will be cats who have visited several countries and returned to strange homes
Sahar Zemli
This author (who prefers to go by a pseudonym, literally meaning “The Sugar of Earth”) is not in the military herself, but she is a partner of one and an incredibly poignant poet.
halloween themed words creepy are houses and streets without illumination some windows are weakly grayed by flashlights and the rumbling of generators is like a strange underground language of unseen netherworld dwellers and the yellow light of garlands seems warmer than usual as if somebody has stolen the sun picked morsels of it to lure freak butterflies from dungeons blind silent countless spooky are cellars and basements underground crossings marked with crude graffiti the deepest subway station in europe cement boxes like caves from which the dead of the future crawl out scary are burned skeletons of cars on the roadsides are flowers and toys near the crater on the playground are photos which social network algorithms hide behind sensitive content captions do you really want to see? do you really want to look at this uncinematographic dead body this uncinematographic pose and this blood so bright not like in the movies horror is short youtube videos reels and tiktoks an interview with a boy who had his entire face skin transplanted ninety percent burns but I am alive an interview with a girl who wears heels on prosthetic legs amputated above the knee I dreamed about heels now I feel pretty an interview with a girl who was raped all night by eleven people (she sits with her back to the camera) an interview with a boy who looked after disabled relatives in the gray zone didn’t want to leave he says didn’t want to abandon them cooking on a fire pit so what I am already eleven I can do everything an interview with a girl who weaves bead necklaces now she says it was hard with one hand but I learned eventually an interview with a boy and titles at the end he fell in july of twenty-fourth on donetchyna during a combat mission sinister is the humming in the sky which gets closer is the wailing of the siren which turned on only after the explosion are wide open windows in empty houses rhythmically slamming in the wind and there is nobody to close them is a drone which sprinkles the forests with poison so that trees drop their leaves and it is harder for f...ts to hide evil is the word f...t which doesn’t mean gays anymore it means harm murderer enemy and is spoken with such hatred which will last for generations scream is when a woman recognizes a body dark is where the cars don’t turn on their lights and drive as fast as they can and somebody holds a thermal sight to the driver’s eyes and somebody prays to get there one more time I don’t watch horror movies anymore they all seem ridiculous compared to documentaries about the war compared to life during the war compared to death during the war fear is what I feel entering the bathroom