This is an earlier collection from the previous one I reviewed at the end of 2023. These poems were translated from the Ukrainian in 2019, from poetry written by Zhadan between 2001 and 2015.

The poems in this collection are somewhat longer than those in the new volume, but it didn't deter me. They are a good introduction on the poet and his work. I love this guy's poetry. Period.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"TAKE ONLY WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT"

Take only what is most important. Take the letters.
Take only what you can carry.
Take the icons and the embroidery, take the silver,
Take the wooden crucifix and the golden replicas.

Take some bread, the vegetables from the garden, then leave.
We will never return again.
We will never see our city again.
Take the letters, all of them, every last piece of bad news.

We will never see our corner store again.
We will never drink from that dry well again.
We will never see familiar faces again.
We are refugees. We’ll run all night.

We will run past fields of sunflowers.
We will run from dogs, rest with cows.
We’ll scoop up water with our bare hands,
sit waiting in camps, annoying the dragons of war.

You will not return, and friends will never come back.
There will be no smoky kitchens, no usual jobs,
There will be no dreamy lights in sleepy towns,
no green valleys, no suburban wastelands.

The sun will be a smudge on the window of a cheap train,
rushing past cholera pits covered with lime.
There will be blood on women’s heels,
tired guards on borderlands covered with snow,

a postman with empty bags shot down,
a priest with a hapless smile hung by his ribs,
the quiet of cemetery, the noise of a command post,
and unedited lists of the dead,

as long that there won’t be enough time
to check them for your own name.

——————————————————— ( )

Zhadan offers not to make sense of a senseless world, but how to make peace with our unquenchable love for it. Sit with his poetry ruminating on the grief and horror of war, and you will find an indefatigable yearning for life, a tenderness for all the tired souls who have passed through this world. Zhadan invites you to sit with that feeling for a bit, to acknowledge your own mortality and be here now. ( )