WE DIG TRENCHES

by Dmitriy Shandra

Translation by Denis Pinchuk and Bohdan Bondarchuk

 Servicemen of Separate 14th Regiment of Armed Forces of Ukraine dig a trench on the frontline in the Zaporizhzhia region. —The Guardian, November 7, 2023

We dig trenches

too tight to stand and walk in

we dig them nights and we dig them mornings

and evenings we dig them

we are swarm

 

There is death

we will tear out its eyes

cut out its heart

and strangle it with beautiful hair

 

Of

The girl from Mariupol

The girl from Irpin

The girl from Bucha

The girl from Gostomel

 

I promise

Dmitriy Shandra is a poet from Ukraine, Kyiv. He is a paramedic of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

LEAVING IRPIN

by Eugene Datta                                           

                             

Photograph by Jérôme Sessini / Magnum for The New Yorker, March 7, 2022

He was going away; he was leaving 

Irpin—his suitcase still upright, waiting—

 

a trustful dog next to the master’s body:

the hand that held it, half-open, blood-

 

smeared, the right foot pointing away. 

Who’s the one lying close by? A friend? 

 

A brother? A co-escapee? Half-covered, half 

on the sidewalk, across curbstones painted 

 

yellow and white, plastic waste strewn 

around. What’s on the mind of the soldier 

 

kneeling on the monument? Head bowed

in grief, flag in hand, flowers in front of him, 

 

two bodies behind—it’s much harder, he’s 

learned the hard way, to do good than bad; 

 

so many more ways for things to go wrong 

than right. Three men with bags in hands 

 

leaving now—lucky to be late, to be in time, 

lucky to be leaving. A willow weeping 

 

behind a shattered roof, a slate-gray sky 

crisscrossed by overhead lines—

 

a farewell exhaled in haste covering the body, 

the suitcase still upright, waiting—

Eugene Datta's writing has appeared in The New Verse News, Poetry Bay, the Richmond Review, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, West Coast Line (currently Line), and Poetry Salzburg. He lives and works in Aachen, Germany.