Tag Archives: Writing

WORDS LIVE ON // Serhii Zubatenko

Down through the ages, Russia has tried to kill the Ukrainian identity. They have done everything to present Ukraine as the rural outskirts of the ‘great, educated and advanced’ Russian empire. But the ones who proclaimed themselves enlighteners were merely butchers, murderers. They did everything they could to erase Ukrainian culture, traditions, and even the Ukrainian language itself.

And they are still doing this, even now, literally. During the last eleven years of war, Russia has killed hundreds of people of literature. Writers, poets, translators, editors, publishers and librarians. Ukrainian men and women. As you read these words, others are left to disappear in an unread draft forever.

There is a project called ‘Nedopysani‘ (‘Unfinished‘ in English). It’s a memorial site for people of literature who will never be able to put that final dot in their notebook, who will never be able to take into their hands their first published book. And so, this is our hard and painful mission. This is what we must do for them. It is inevitable.

Today, we present the next instalment of our translation series, ‘Words Live On’. We have done our best, and we hope that it will speak to our Dear Readers in a way that cold, clinical war statistics cannot.

Glory to Ukraine! To our heroes — glory!

Let
Life go to hell
Drink hard
I’ll see how a ray ripens
Don’t keep
Spring screws off the tails
Of all tomcats, hard
to recall

Floats
So bright and dull
Lives
Before isn’t too late, from the boat
Escapes
In a trice to the bottom for pearls
What will others say? Doesn’t matter

Forget
Keep waves, don’t let ’em slip
No humans
Who keep the keys from every passway
Our path
Is tangled with lianas. The very same.
Since morn the beasts already
Roar

Нехай
Життя іде під три чорти
Бухай
Я подивлюсь як зріє промінь
Не май
Весна відкручує хвости
Усім котам, важким
на спомин

Пливе
Така яскрава і нудна
Живе
Поки не пізно із човна
Втече
Мигцем за перлами на дно
Що скажуть інші? Все одно

Забудь
Тримайся хвилі, не впусти
Не людь
Знає ключі від всіх ходів
Наш путь
Уплівсь ліаною. Той самою.
А звірі зранку вже
Ревуть

Original poem by SERHII ZUBATENKO
Translation by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2018

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // The Dog. by Oliver Herford

The Dog is black or white or brown
And sometimes spotted like a clown.
He loves to make a foolish noise
And Human Company enjoys.
The Human People pat his head
And teach him to pretend he’s dead,
And beg, and fetch and carry too;
Things that no well-bred Cat will do.
At Human jokes, however stale,
He jumps about and wags his tail,
And Human People clap their hands
And think he really understands.
They say “Good Dog” to him. To us
They say “Poor Puss,” and make no fuss.
Why Dogs are “good” and Cats are “poor”
I fail to understand, I’m sure.
To Someone very Good and Just,
Who has proved worthy of her trust,
A Cat will sometimes condescend—
The Dog is Everybody’s friend.

by OLIVER HERFORD (1863-1935)
Public Domain Poetry

GUEST POST // Tairngreacht by Whitecatgrove

The last hum of summer — I hunger
for more, a kinder year when all is not
withered on the vine. The burning boats
are not a kind sun, the wildfires are not
the butterfly migration. The cup
poured out again, by an unjust king
emptied and spent on wasted earth. Red
the riders to the house of red, red
the naked spirit who knocks on the door.
What a time to live — seeing a myth
paid in full, embodied and poured out
in a sea without fish, a summer
without fruit, a land without justice.

by WHITECATGROVE
© All rights reserved 2026

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // Ode To Man. by Thomas Frederick Young

A man is not what oft he seems,
On this terrestrial sphere,
No pow’r to wield, no honor’d place,
Oft curb his spirit here.

He knows not what within him lies,
Until his pow’rs be tried,
And when for them some use is found,
They spring from where they hide,

To startle and to puzzle him,
Who never knew their force,
Because his unfreed spirit kept
A low and shackl’d course.

Dishearten’d and despairing, he
Had often sigh’d alone,
Not thinking that in other ways
His spirit might have grown.

Not thinking that another course,
Which needed pluck and vim,
Might raise his drowning spirit high,
And teach it how to swim;

To battle with the rolling tide,
That hurries onward men,
And raise his head above the waves,
That come and go again.

by THOMAS FREDERICK YOUNG (1892-1940)
Public Domain Poetry

WORDS LIVE ON // Illia Chernilevskyi

Down through the ages, Russia has tried to kill the Ukrainian identity. They have done everything to present Ukraine as the rural outskirts of the ‘great, educated and advanced’ Russian empire. But the ones who proclaimed themselves enlighteners were merely butchers, murderers. They did everything they could to erase Ukrainian culture, traditions, and even the Ukrainian language itself.

And they are still doing this, even now, literally. During the last eleven years of war, Russia has killed hundreds of people of literature. Writers, poets, translators, editors, publishers and librarians. Ukrainian men and women. As you read these words, others are left to disappear in an unread draft forever.

There is a project called ‘Nedopysani‘ (‘Unfinished‘ in English). It’s a memorial site for people of literature who will never be able to put that final dot in their notebook, who will never be able to take into their hands their first published book. And so, this is our hard and painful mission. This is what we must do for them. It is inevitable.

Today, we present the next instalment of our translation series, ‘Words Live On’. We have done our best, and we hope that it will speak to our Dear Readers in a way that cold, clinical war statistics cannot.

Glory to Ukraine! To our heroes — glory!

Because someone put a leash on my tongue,
because now there is no one to say, “I’m missing,”
because truth is—in fact—not a signpost,
because there are no truths at all in the world.
That’s why your “today”
is only today
and the Sun, like a puppy, licks the earth’s feet,
because all our tears are bitter and salty
emigrated forever to the land of self‑depreciation.
Because the stars are soft, like the heels of infants,
because the whole world, ’til the last drop
explodes each day and flows back into the womb,
like the footprints left by Jesus’s sandals.
Because a word and rhyme long ago
lost their status as weapons of mass destruction,
because the wrinkles appeared
in a gaze at the window,
and you did not notice them
in your daily reflection.

Тому що хтось надів нашийник на мій язик,
тому що нікому казати тепер «I’m missing»,
тому що істина – насправді не вказівник,
тому що в світі взагалі немає ніяких істин.
Тому є твоє «сьогодні»
лише сьогодні
і сонце, що ноги землі, як цуцик, лиже,
тому що всі наші сльози гіркі й солоні
емігрували навіки в країну самопринижень.
Тому що зорі м’які, як п’яти у немовлят,
тому що весь світ до останньої краплі
вибухає щоденно і лине в утробу назад,
як сліди, що лишили Ісуса сандалі.
Тому що слово і рима уже давно
утратили статус зброї масового ураження,
тому що з’явились зморшки
у погляді на вікно,
яких ти не помітив
у щоденному відображенні.

Original poem by ILLIA CHERNILEVSKYI
Translation by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2022