it was just a dream
of guillermo del toro
with his eyes sewn closed
chortling on a bed
near a wall crawling with bugs
as jack black looked on
were they both brothers
from a different mother
was the real question
by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2025
O south star through the trees seen — where are
your kin on this flustered night? Hidden,
shy, sequestered in the sky above
the cooling clouds and their sparkling motes.
The half-empty moon has tipped his cup,
let the dregs fall upon the slumbered Earth.
We travel from darkness to darkness,
the light intermittent, inconstant,
afflicted with mighty tracts of void.
Your perturbations are a matter
of atmosphere: that is to say, Earth,
not that mighty glare on the other side
of time. We are phantoms: you of the past
long-dissipated, me of the future
yet unimagined, each tender view
occluded by ice crystals and chance —
by WHITECATGROVE
© All rights reserved 2026
i am what i am
your very own spinning wheel
spin me until you get what you feel
or put me on a car, i will get you far
or put a hamster in me so
we get nowhere fast, i do not care
take me down off the tree
whenever you need a reason
i am your dedicated fruit machine
a revolving door of tide & whim
a cog in the christian fascist regime
a twist of the key in a nail scarred hand
i am what you say that i say i am
at which point i frankly don’t give a damn
whatever you need is all i can be
but there is one thing i would ask of you
to put me back when you are done
by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2026
Life with the sun in it –
Shaded by gloom!
Life with the fun in it –
Shadowed by Doom!
Life with its Love ever haunted by Hate!
Life’s laughing morrows frowned over by Fate!
Young Life’s wild gladness still waylaid by Age!
All its sweet badness still mocking the sage!
What can e’er measure the joy of its strife?
What boundless leisure
Count the heaped treasure
Of woe, that’s the pleasure
And beauty of Life?
by THOMAS RUNCIMAN (1841 – 1909)
Public Domain Poetry
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!
if a lion or a cougar
start hunting you
don’t worry, don’t fight
don’t be afraid of
it makes sense to keep to one side
stray dogs and rats.
the predators with appetite
for you
are hardly
carnivorous.
якщо лев чи пума
почнуть полювання на тебе
не страшно, не бийся
не бійся
варто обабіч триматись
бродячих собак і щурів.
хижаки з апетитом
на тебе
навряд чи
м’ясоїди.
Original poem by SERHII NAUMENKO
Translation by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2020
unbolt me 