POST SCRIPTUM_4_2022_18_Special_Edition_Ukraine_Eng

POST 

INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 

OF LITERATURE & THE ARTS 

SCRIPTUM 

PROSE POETRY VISUAL ARTS ARTICLES INTERVIEWS 

Alireza Karimi Moghaddam, 

Charles B. Wordsmith, TUTU, 

John Sephton, Kevin Morris, Seth, 

Artur Zienko, Andrea Mbarushimana, 

Piotr Jakubczak, Michał Zabłocki 

Jarosław Krawczak, ChemiS, 

Krzysztof Łozowski, WOSKerski, 

Danylo Movchan, Agata Dębicka, 

Agnieszka Traczyńska, KAWU, 

Iwona Siwek-Front, Parvati, 

Yaryna Movchan, Allan Murrell, 

Agnieszka Litwin, Ola Haydamaka, 

Maximiliano Bagnasco, Pieksa, 

Seth Globepainter, MyDogSighs, 

Paweł Wąsowicz, Yurii Ivantsyk, 

JenksArt, Christian Guémy, SEF, 

John D’oh, Voytek Glinkowski, 

Ilya Kaminsky, Juliusz Wątroba, 

George Wright, Maggie Hall, 

Bogna Jarzemska-Misztalska, 

Muhammad Khurram Salim, 

Krzysztof Wiśniewski, Radek Ruciński, 

Tatiana Averina, Piotr Kamieniarz, 

Renata Cygan, Matthew Dover, 

Katarzyna Zygadlewicz, Marcin Zegadło 

Ula Dzwonik, Julija Musakowska, , 

Ija Kiwa, Anna Ponomarenko, 

Elżbieta Isakiewicz, Ryszard Kupidura, 

Ołeksandr Kłymenko, Aleksey Kislow 

Joanna Nordyńska, Karol Maliszewski, 

Paweł Kuczyński, Ewa Klonowska, 

Haśka Szyjan, Ted Smith Orr, 

Ann Lovelace, Maggie Hall, 

Loraine Saacks, Nick Alldridge, 

Robin Pilcher, Kateryna Michalicyna 

www.postscriptum.uk 

www.postscriptumfundacja.com 

fb: post scriptum 

4 / 2022 (18) 

SPECIAL 

EDITION 

POST SCRIPTUM 

1

CONTENT: 

4. Charles B. Wordsmith – poetry 

5. Piotr Jakubczak – painting “Golgota” 

6. Marcin Zegadło – 2 essays 

6. Ula Dzwonik – paintings 

8. Krzysztof Łozowski – painting “Water” 

10. Krzysztof Łozowski – drawings 

11. John Sephton, Kevin Morris – poetry 

12. Andrea Mbarushimana – poetry 

13. Paweł Wąsowicz – illustration “Hope” 

15. Danylo Movchan – paintings, interview 

22. Michał Zabłocki – poetry 

23. Agata Dębicka – illustrations 

24. Juliusz Watroba – people to People (?) 

26. Paweł Kuczyński – illustrations 

28. Haśka Szyjan (Ukraine) – poetry 

29. Kateryna Michalicyna (Ukraine) – poetry 

30. Street Art – graffiti artists from all over the world for Ukraine 

48. Allan Murrell – poetry 

49. Radosław Ruciński – painting 

50. Voytek Glinkowski – painting “Conqueror” 

52. Ilya Kaminski – essay 

55. Piotr Kamieniarz – painting “In the Cage” 

56. George Wright – poetry 

58. Tatiana Averina (Ukraine) – photography 

60. Bogna Jarzemska-Misztalska – painting “Three Wishes” 

61. Maggie Hall – poetry 

62. Iwona Siwek-Font – “Exodus”- paintings 

66. Ewa Klonowska – painting “Exodus” 

67. Muhammad Khurram Salim – poetry 

68. Artur Zienko – paintings 

70. Alireza Karimi Moghaddam (Iran) – paintings 

72. Loraine Saacks – poetry 

73. Matthew Dover – Illustrations 

74. Yaryna Movchan (Ukraine) – paintings 

78. Anna Ponomarenko (Ukraine) – paintings 

80. Ryszard Kupidura – essay 

81. Katarzyna Zygadlewicz – painting 

83. Nick Alldridge – poetry 

84. Piotr Jakubczak – “War” – paintings 

86. Robin Pilcher – poetry 

88. Agnieszka Traczyńska – paintings 

90. Radek Ruciński – painting 

91. Elżbieta Isakiewicz – fragment of book 

91. Agnieszka Litwin – illustration 

92. Ted Smith Orr – poetry 

94. Yurii Ivantsyk (Ukraina) – illustrations 

96. Ann Lovelace – poetry 

97. Jarosław Krawczak – photography 

98. Joanna Nordyńska – Passers by – essay 

110. Krzysztof Wiśniewski, Ola Haydamaka - paintings 

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PARTNERZY MEDIALNI 

EDITORIAL TEAM: 

Renata Cygan (Editor-in-Chief), Katarzyna Brus-Sawczuk (deputy editor), Joanna Nordyńska (deputy editor), 

Juliusz Wątroba, Anna Maruszeczko, Izolda Kiec, Wanda Dusia-Stańczak, Renata Szpunar, Robert Knapik, Iza Smolarek, 

Alex Sławiński, Paweł Krupka. 

Guest appearances: Ryszard Kupidura, Ilya Kaminski, Maria Karwowska, Marcin Zegadło, Elżbieta Isakiewicz 

Proof readers: Liz Draper, Andrea McDowell, Arco Van Ieperen, Benjamin Becula, Monika Cygan, Ania Cygan 

Translations from Polish language: Renata Cygan, Olga Sawczuk, Arco Van Ieperen, Katarzyna Krawiecka, 

Monika Cygan, Ania Cygan 

Composition and graphic design: Renata Cygan

Picture on the cover: 

Parvati 

EDITORIAL 

Co wspólnego ze Sztuką ma kurze jajko lub ciąża? Albo zęby? Okazuje 

się, że bardzo dużo. Z żółtka „You should można praise bowiem the wyprodukować crippled world” - temperę, Adam Zagajewski dzięki 

Ostatnio coraz częściej budzimy się w nowym świecie. Zazwyczaj gorszym od 

poprzedniego (niestety). Rzeczywistość, w której obudziliśmy się 24 lutego, pozostawiła 

nas In the której 

w osłupieniu, March powstają issue świetliste 

niedowierzaniu of Post Scriptum, obrazy, pełne 

i poczuciu we devoted tajemnicy 

bezsilności. a lot i of magii 

Czy space (tak 

wypada to jak topics u naszego 

zajmować that arose gościa 

of specjalnego, 

się kulturą 

as a result 

i sztuką, 

war circumstances. Iwony Wojewody, 

gdy za progiem 

Artists 

naszego 

from która 

domu 

all over umiłowała 

giną 

the 

niewinni 

world, sobie in 

ludzie? 

a porządek gesture 

Niech 

of i piękno solidarity ujęte 

za odpowiedź 

with the 

posłużą 

fighting w matematycznych 

słowa 

Ukraine, 

papieża 

rebel proporcjach). 

Polaka: 

against 

„Naród 

the unjustified, W koronach 

istnieje z 

criminal zębów 

kultury i 

aggression natomiast można 

dla kultury”. 

of 

Bez 

Putin’s ukryć 

kultury 

Russia, rzeźby 

senseless i portrety shedding w skali mikro. of blood Można and give także vent budować to their własne emotions aparaty by creating fotograficzne, works of art, 

nie ma 

against 

the 

narodu, nie ma państwa, bowiem kultura w życiu społecznym zawsze stanowiła fundament 

whether które wyglądają as a sign of jak protest urządzenia against nie the z war tej epoki or as a – material dziwaczne form pudła for helping produkujące fighters and 

victims. 

jedyne tożsamości. 

We 

w 

are 

swoim 

talking 

I tego rodzaju, 

about 

się trzymajmy. niezwykle 

a new art of 

klimatyczne 

humanism, 

zdjęcia, 

which is 

jak 

to 

u 

help 

ukraińskiej 

discover 

fotografki, 

the truth 

W about obliczu ourselves, 

Tatiany 

tragedii, stimulate 

Averiny, 

jaka dotknęła reflection, 

która korzysta 

Ukrainę, but artyści most 

z aparatu 

of i ludzie all cause 

skonstruowanego 

kultury a change jednoczą in our 

przez 

się way 

japońi 

zabierają of thinking. 

skiego mistrza, Haruhisę Terasakiego. A do ciąży porównał Sztukę Voytek Glinkowski 

– cases, nie można these być works tylko are trochę earmarked „w”, bowiem for auctions, prawdziwy the profits artysta of which w Sztuce are donated się to 

głos, angażując się w pomoc dla ofiar bratobójczej wojny. Green Day odwołali koncert 

In most 

w 

people 

Moskwie, 

zatraca. affected Mamy 

Mick 

by 

Jagger, 

w the tym war. 

Elton 

numerze 

John, 

kilkoro 

Pearl Jam 

takich 

publikują 

zatraceńców-oryginałów 

zdjęcia z żółto-niebieską 

– każdy 

flagą. 

Madonna niezwykły, potępiła każdy konflikt, w swoim publikując rodzaju. antywojenny klip. Stephen King, Angelina Jolie, 

Leonardo We received di Caprio, a lot of Sting, materials Mark from Ruffalo all i over wielu, the wielu world, innych so there celebrytów was a need wysyłają to create swoje this 

wsparcie. special, historical Warszawskie Voytek edition, Glinkowski teatry which grają powiedział: has dla been Ukrainy. already „Wyrywam Monika published życiu Brodka in różne Polish gotuje klejnoty, and zupę now na kiedy granicy, we are presenting 

wychylę Musiał the się English oddaje z ukrycia”. version. krew, Sam Margaret, War jest is a jednym time Michał of z trial Wiśniewski, wielu and klejnotów truth Robert – hearts tego Janowski grow wydania when czy „Post Julia we Ka- 

see so 

Maciej 

mińska many Scriptum”, people udostępniają of a przyfrunął good mieszkania will, do when nas uchodźcom. we z samego pass the Chicago. Przedstawiciele test of humanity Mamy też rodzimej in innych various sceny zacnych ways. muzycznej Together gości we 

przekazali have z zagranicy: the power! prawie 

z Malezji, Every milion form złotych 

Armenii, of protest, na 

Albanii, 

pomoc every Ukrainy 

osobom brick i z 

potrzebującym. of Londynu. help, brotherhood Bo naszym 

Odbywają and celem spiritual się 

jest 

liczne support 

sięganie unites i licytacje 

aukcje 

wysoko us, creating dzieł 

i daleko, 

sztuki, a strong przekraczanie 

z których voice dochód against granic aggression przeznacza 

dosłownie and się 

i w 

na hatred. przenośni, 

pomoc Ukraine Ukrainie. 

ku naszej is not alone, 

and i Państwa we express radości. this also in the pages of Post Scriptum, because evil, harm and lies cannot 

PEN be tolerated. International, organizacja działająca na rzecz literatury i wolności słowa, opublikowała 

list 

Z 

otwarty 

rodzimego 

laureatów 

podwórka, 

Nagrody 

choć 

Nobla, 

temat 

pisarzy 

jest 

i artystów, 

ogólnoświatowy, 

potępiający 

polecam 

rosyjską 

niezwykle poruszający artykuł Juliusza Wątroby Quo vadis świecie? Temat ważny 

inwazję Why was na this Ukrainę special i issue nawołujący created? do Because pokoju. it Unia was worth literacka collecting apeluje: these „Dziś wonderful szczególnie works 

i ważki – wołanie o pomoc dla duszącej się, wskutek działań człowieka, planety. 

myślimy in one place 

Cywilizacja 

o ukraińskich to please 

(która nie 

pisarzach our eyes 

rozumie 

i and pisarkach hearts 

samej siebie) 

– and naszych to cheer 

dopadła 

przyjaciołach, up the victims. 

nas i trzyma 

znajomych, People 

jak w imadle, 

naszych are losing 

tłumaczach 

homes, but 

a my, w pogoni 

i 

they 

wydawcach. 

are not losing 

za rzeczami 

Przez 

us. 

błahymi, 

ponad 

We 

trzydzieści 

are here to 

zagłuszamy 

lat 

help 

w 

wolnej 

them 

sobie 

Polski 

survive 

podstawowe 

i wolnej 

the war. 

instynkty. 

Ukrainy literatura 

We Warto present jest o jednym tym you mówić, an z anti-war miejsc, a nawet gdzie gallery krzyczeć, nasze of paintings, narody bo czas spotykają photographs, najwyższy, się by najbliżej”. and ludzkość murals, ocknęła as well się as a lot 

W 

of 

tym z strong, letargu, numerze 

moving w którym „Post 

poems się Scriptum” wygodnie and prose. 

znajdziecie umościła In both 

Państwo 

versions i beztrosko of 

sporo 

the wegetuje akcentów 

special bez edition, głębszych ukraińskich, 

we have re-pofleksji 

to collect 

cząwszy 

managed 

od i widoków okładkowego 

the works na przyszłość. of 

plakatu 

almost „[…] Andrzeja 

one człowiek hundred 

Pągowskiego ulega artists zbyt from 

Panna mocno all over 

wolna, wierze the we przez 

world! własną obrazy, 

The genre 

weight 

które 

życiową of this 

powstały 

siłę, release, 

pod 

w dominację the enormity 

wpływem aktualnych 

nad światem of its emotions 

wydarzeń 

natury i and 

i 

zbyt sensitivity 

są przeznaczane 

późno zdaje of the 

na 

sobie creators 

zbiórki 

sprawę are really 

pieniędzy 

dla potrzebujących, po mocne, wojenne wiersze ukraińskich poetek. 

impressive! z paradoksów istnienia” – tak pisze prof. Izolda Kiec w swoim artykule „Śmierć na 

pięć”. 

Poza 

We contacted 

tym – jak 

graffiti 

zwykle 

artists 

u nas – 

dużo 

including 

dobrej 

those 

literatury 

from the 

i sztuki 

most 

z 

distant 

różnych 

corners 

dziedzin, 

of the 

w tym 

planet 

(e.g., Argentina, 

bardzo ciekawe 

Oddajemy Indonesia, 

wywiady 

w Państwa America, 

z artystami 

ręce Iran), 

największego 

(i serca) who kolejny, wear blue 

formatu, 

starannie and yellow 

m.in. 

przygotowany colors rozmowa Kasi 

materiał. 

can still Różnorodny, coexist beyond wyważony, divisions gustownie in certain oprawiony areas of life. i ciekawy. We also Polecamy invited many się gorą- 

contempo- 

show that 

Bruswe 

-Sawczuk 

rary 

z maestrem interpretacji Krzysztofem Gosztyłą (gościem specjalnym tego numeru)co, 

Ukrainian z nadzieją, artists, że nasze such wysiłki as: Danylo nie są Movchan, nadaremne. Haśka Szyjan, Kateryna Michalicyna, Chrystia 

Wenhryniuk, 

Anny Maruszeczko 

Ija Kiwa, Ilya 

z malarką 

Kaminski, 

abstrakcyjną 

Tatiana Averina, 

Magdą 

Anna 

Atkins 

Ponomarenko, 

czy Joasi Nordyńskiej 

Yurii Ivantsyk, 

z Yaryna nietuzinkową Movchan. A korzystając wokalistką The power z okazji, Izą is Połońską. with że święta us! Są tuż opowiadania, tuż, życzymy naszym recenzje drogim i felieton Czytelnikom 

samych o wolności wspaniałości. oraz wyjątkowo Idąc za dużo radą poezji Stanisława ilustrowanej Lema – bądźmy pięknymi dobrej obrazami. myśli, Jest 

Juliusza 

Wątroby 

co Let bo czytać, me po quote co jest być an co złej? extraordinary oglądać, jest o poetess czym pomyśleć. Papusza: „I am coming so that you do not make the 

dark night in broad daylight”. 

Serdecznie zapraszamy do refleksji. 

Editor-in-Chief 

www.postscriptum.uk, fb: post scriptum, e-mail: redakcja@postscriptum.uk 

Publisher: Post Scriptum LTD, Watford, UK 

account number: IBAN: GB82 LOYD 3096 2657 4181 60 

UK: SORT CODE: 309626 ACC Number: 57418160 


3

ODE TO A RUSSIAN HOOLIGAN 

Dedicated to Marina Ovsyannikova 

Just another news broadcast 

About Russia’s special military operation 

And then this crazy lady walks across the set, 

Carrying a banner, which reads 

‘Don’t believe the propaganda, 

They’re Lying to you here’, 

Signed ‘Russians against the War’. 

‘ 

What I wonder will the babushkas say 

In the ocheret to buy kalbaca, 

“She must be mentally unbalanced”, 

“Or maybe a stooge for those Ukrainian fascists”, 

“Surely our great leader Putin wouldn’t lie to us”. 

The babushka at the end of the line keeps silent. 

Her eighteen year old grandson 

Is currently sitting in a tank 

Outside the city of Kyiv. 

“She’s just been fined, 

They should chuck her into prison and throw away the key, 

That’s what such traitors deserve”. 

Behind the sausage counter 

A young woman wraps up the meat 

For her rather disgruntled customers. 

She wants to tell them about the text 

Her boyfriend sent her, 

Showing pictures of bombed out buildings, 

People fleeing their homes, 

And how the Ukrainian soldier he captured, 

The same age as himself 

Wanted to know why Russia 

Seemed so intent 

On destroying and killing fellow Slavs. 

She wants him home. 

They were going to get married in the summer, 

But who knows now, when, if ever, 

Her handsome groom will return. 

She wants to scream at the babushkas 

Don’t believe what the national state TV tells you. 

In Russia these days, the only people 

You can rely on to tell the truth 

Are those they call ‘hooligans’. 

After all, who should really be thrown into prison? 

A brave lady, who could no longer stand all the lies, 

And risked her career and freedom to let the people know 

What was really happening in Ukraine, 

Or our strong leader, who happens to be 

Guilty of mass murder? 

POEMS 

WHO IS THE REAL FASCIST? 

If you want to make a person seem evil and frightening 

Call him or her a fascist 

If you want to make people seem scary and threatening 

Call them fascists. 

So easy to call people names, 

To obscure the truth, 

To hide the facts, 

To paint yourself as the virtuous hero 

And your enemy as a terrible villain. 

Looking at the newsreels from Mariupol, 

At the flattened buildings and deserted streets, 

Hearing about the 300.000 civilians still trapped 

Inside their besieged, broken city, 

Still bravely refusing to surrender, 

Despite their enemy’s awful ultimatum, 

I find I have to ask myself 

Who, here, is the real fascist? 

Fascists believe they have the right, 

Due to their strength and power, 

To impose their will on those lesser nations, 

Who do not have the honour or good fortune 

To be born of the right nationality. 

Fascists like to invade other countries, 

To show who is boss, to pretend 

That they are destroying peoples’ lives 

For some greater nationalist glory. 

Fascists are very good at lying, 

Good at locking up or killing 

Those that dare to tell the truth. 

According to Putin, the war in Ukraine 

Is merely a special military operation, 

And anyone who says otherwise 

Is guilty of treason. 

C h a r l e s B . W o r d s m i t h 

Underneath the bombed and flattened Mariupol theatre 

In the shivering uncertain safety of the basement, 

The victims of Putin’s special military operation, 

Try to work out how they might get some water. 

Unlike this poet, their only focus is survival, 

But, if some do survive, if perhaps 

One day some act in a future play, 

Called ‘The Siege of Mariupol’, 

I think we know, who the evil criminal will be 

And which side will appear as fascists. 

4 POST SCRIPTUM

ARTISTS FOR UKRAINE 

P I O T R J A K U B C Z a K 

GOLGOTA 22 


5

M A R C I N Z E G A D Ł O 

Mindfulness’, such a fashionable 

word. Like a hashtag. Instagram 

is full of mindfulness linked to 

similarly named posts. I urge you, 

though, to take it seriously and to 

focus on the here and now, especially 

when a script from World War II 

movies is playing out not so far away. 

Or something that reminds you that 

the Balkan War thirty years ago was 

a conventional conflict in Europe, the 

bloodiest since 1945, which also happened 

when we lived normal lives, 

while in some pits in the forest the 

corpses of women and children were 

covered with layers of loose earth. 

So, mindfulness. After all, the last few 

days have been devastated by a reality 

in which most of us have deigned 

to have delusions. Mindfulness, which 

I understand as squeezing the entire 

content out of the „here and now”, 

sucking the flesh from everyday life, 

touching the surface, feeling the flavours, 

inhaling the icy air. 

Go for a walk with or without a dog 

and focus on the fact that you are taking 

step after step. That you may have 

the cold honey of the March sun on 

your face, or leaving the metaphorical, 

be glad to hear traffic, that people 

around you are not only talking 

about the war, that perhaps the rain 

and snow have just caught you and 

that is the greatest discomfort at the 

moment. That no sniper would shoot 

your skull on the way to the store, and 

that a volley of bullets from a handgun 

would not softly pierce the bus 

your child was taking to school. 

6 POST SCRIPTUM 

I don’t want to pretend this doesn’t 

apply to me, although I cut myself off 

from it to some extent. I try to run 

away from it a bit, although I know it’s 

not entirely fair. I’m at an age when 

I’m not driven by adrenaline, which 

stems from the extraordinary nature 

of events. I know this is not entirely 

fair, but I still have a breath of a quite 

specific depression on my back, from 

which I am recovering and my fears 

are soothed into peace with pharmacological 

support. Anyway, thanks 

to my friends, I had and have the opportunity 

to participate in real help 

for those who need it, so my escape 

is more symbolic than real. Perhaps 

I just need it so as not to overdo it. 

I don’t know. 

So I take Homer for a walk and we just 

keep walking. I am glad that I am walking, 

that I exist and breathe. That I can 

still expect that in the evening I will 

read my books, and my lovely Wi will 

read hers next to me. That the kids will 

argue and scream, but eventually, at 

night, I will hear their breaths - steady 

and deep. That Homer’s snoring will 

cease when I cluck my tongue and the 

hamster no longer bothers us when, 

between one and four in the morning, 

it tries to prove that it can tear apart 

its cage and it will never die. 

I am writing this tearful text because 

I think about all those for whom these 

trifles ended a few days ago, and for 

whom the blocks of flats and city centres 

they know so well have become 

a battlefield. 

Nothing makes more of an impression 

on me than a prefab skyscraper 

hit by a missile. Exactly the same 

as the ones that filled my childhood 

and my youth in the neighbourhood, 

which kept growing like a blur, flowing 

into the next units. 

Now I can see, whether I want to or 

not, how bomb craters are steaming 

after my neighbourhood was hit by 

missiles that blew whole blocks into 

the air. I see it in the undefined future, 

and the spark is this high-rise 

building made of the material that I 

run into on the web. 

I don’t want to look at myself this 

way, but I know that I owe it a little 

to those who experience it, and 

I owe it a little bit to these images 

imprinted by a narrative well-known 

from stories about what happened 

once – how the Germans came, 

then the Russians – because I heard 

it hundreds of times while eating 

a crispy cake at my grandparents’ 

house. 

So, I count on mindfulness and focus 

on what I can still get from a reality 

where some Kremlin prick placed a 

question mark. I walk and feel. I try 

to feel as much as possible. Homer 

is once behind me, once in front of 

me.He watches me carefully as if he 

was about to say: „ Let’s go back for 

dinner, man. Your two legs may hurt 

– I’ve got four! Get it? “ [MZ]

PAINTINGS 

Ula Dzwonik 

The experience of the war triggers 

in me a series of family stories, 

all family myths from two wars 

which, separated by twenty years, left 

a mark of trauma on my relatives. 

That is why the bombs falling on 

Ukrainian cities bring back memories 

of my grandfather in bombed Lublin. 

On that September day, he was several 

tenement houses away from the 

place where the poet Józef Czechowicz 

died in a barber’s chair, in a building 

hit by a German bomb. Photographs 

of refugees remind me of my 

great-grandmother and her daughters 

on the train to the east, where the 

families of professional Polish officers 

fighting at the front were evacuated 

from Częstochowa. Ligia and Krystyna. 

The first will be my grandmother, 

the second will be murdered by the 

Germans in Auschwitz, where she will 

be sent for issuing false documents to 

Jews from the Częstochowa ghetto. 

And also my grandfather on the Buchenwald 

assembly square and my 

mother’s mother suffering from typhus 

in the hospital in Sandomierz, 

when the thunder of the Soviet offensive 

can be heard outside the window. 

And my mother’s father, who wanted 

to join the partisans, to Jędrusia, 

but ultimately did not go, and a few 

years later watched the operation of 

“Vistula” as a conscript. I see him in 

the photograph in a faded blouse of 

a field uniform, by a radio station. 

In this sense, there is no escape from 

what has been happening in Ukraine. 

It is already inside me, and it works 

at full speed with images, series of 

associations, sequences of myths, 

imprinted fears that they will come, 

burn, drive us away. And yet, these 

are stories that do not stick into one 

reality with a smartphone, Facebook, 

Instagram, and the world available 

at your fingertips. It doesn’t connect 

with pictures of Ukrainian teenagers 

with knee and elbow pads and Kalashnikovs 

hanging from their necks. 

They are wearing the same clothes 

from the same chain stores as their 

peers in Poland. The only difference 

is the presence of a gun and someone 

teaching them how to shoot. 

And yet those in the photos of the 

Warsaw Uprising were so similar to 

these Ukrainian boys and girls. We 

have just got used to the fact that 

the war is black and white, and the 

photos are in poor resolution. War 

in colour does not match the picture 

we know. A tank pulping a car with 

living people inside is a false image 

even when we see it live. Our brain 

can’t process it yet. My brain was 

promised a completely different reality. 

The war was supposed to be an 

increasingly distant memory. 

At the same time, there is an unusual 

social activation. Help is coming. 

People I know are doing fantastic 

things for those that have already 

been affected by the war. It embarrasses 

me. I presume there is more 

evil in man than good. I think this 

way because I know the history of 

this planet quite well. And that’s exactly 

what I’m going to stick to, because 

it is what leads a man to aim at 

a maternity hospital and drop bombs 

on it or shoot missiles at it. 

I can’t help it that, looking at the sky 

above my city, I imagine some ghostly 

raid on it. In my mind the neighbourhood 

burns then. And after a while, 

I say hello to my colleagues, and 

everything disappears. It’s March 

2022 and where I live it is still ‘before 

the war’. [MZ] 


7


Krzysztof Łozowski 

wATER 


9

D R A W I N G S 

KRZYSZTOF 

ŁOZOWSKI 


P O E M S 

J o h n S e p h t o n 

HARD RAIN 

dark knights in armour 

mad bears marching on to war 

longbowmen at the border 

a hard rain’s gonna fall 

K e v i n M o r r i s 

On my way 

To eat breakfast 

In a café 

On an ordinary 

Saturday, I heard birds. 

While in Ukraine’s Kiev 

Birdsong was drowned 

Out by bombs. 


11

TODAY (FOR UKRAINE) 

A n d r e a M b a r u s h i m a n a 

There’s a bomb in my tumble dryer 

the cars are full of streets, collected in panic 

I look around our home at photos that we hung against today 

and hope the walls can keep the faces of my babies safe 

Today I’m busy shedding all my pages 

re-learning trust like puppy 

in a house full of strange hands 

I have given my passport details out to strangers 

sung lullabies to men with firearms 

It makes me laugh that last week if you’d asked 

I would have sworn I’d rather starve 

than eat out of a rubbish can 

Today I am packing my children into brown cardboard 

like Amazon parcels hoping to be delivered into safe hands 

only, the roads are knotted 

people are gathered into murmurations 

we are a wailing vortex of unmoored plans 

Today we chose between our wants and needs 

Tell me, where is that tutorial livestreamed? 

My mind keeps running back, 

over the scarf left on the back of the cupboard door 

my lost mother gave me 

I have no language suitable for today 

My tongue is a shoe, I’m licking miles 

that taste like pitch, I’m pitched out of my life 

I’ve swallowed my pride so many times 

when a stranger serves us soup 

I look into the bowl and vomit tears 

12 


H O P E 

Paweł Wąsowicz 


13 13

ДАНИЛО МОВЧАН 


UKRAINE 

D A N Y L O M O V C H A N 


15

DANYLO MOVCHAN is an Ukrainian 

artist born in 1979 who lives 

and works in Lviv, Ukraine. 

His works are mainly located in 

churches but also in private collections 

in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, 

Western Europe, Canada and 

USA. Danylo studied at the Lviv 

Decorative and Applied Art College 

named after I. Trush in its restoration 

department after that he was 

studying Sacred Art at Lviv National 

Academy of Arts. In Danylo’s 

works, he turns to topics that can 

open the path to God for him. Movchan 

is looking for images of new 

Christian symbols, where a person 

with their problems stands in the 

centre. 


WAR IN UKRAINE 


17

There is not enough peace to continue art 

In your works you draw on aesthetics and mysticism belonging 

to the icons of eastern literature. In our world, 

contemplating an icon is both a path to God as well as 

a miracle, and the iconographer, i.e., its author, breaks 

away from the habit of expecting specific cognitive content. 

(So – to an extent – the splendour of the creator is 

diluted.) The piece becomes a mere tool – a message. 

Meanwhile, your painting is unique. How do you explain 

this discrepancy? 

For my part, I do my best to listen to my inner voice. I can’t 

appraise my unique relationship with God and actually 

I don’t want to. Ideas come to me and spark new compositions, 

new images. I think this is an inherent part of every 

artist’s experience. But as an artist, I’m also a product of 

the environment and culture I live in and I draw inspiration 

there too. As you delve deeper into your environment, ideas 

begin to stream towards you. Notwithstanding, aspects 

of Christianity serve as additional fuel for my art. They give 

me food for thought. 

The characters in your paintings seem to approach the 

viewer. They wouldn’t look out of place illustrating children’s 

fairy tales; many of them feature a stark white 

background. Is this how you bridge religious and secular 

worlds because those from a secular world might 

not necessarily know how to interpret Byzantine icons? 

Don’t you sometimes feel like you are straying near the 

limits of the established canon? 

I approach this topic very carefully and creatively. This is 

a direction I’ve chosen deliberately. In portraying the sacred, 

one shouldn’t just take a topic and duplicate it. I see 

this clearly when considering centuries of iconography. 

New forms are always needed for a contemporary understanding 

of the truths of Christianity. 

Is it easier to be an iconographer today in an increasingly 

black and white world – a world with binary views of 

good and evil? Is this not in synergy with the traditional 

iconographic palette’s depictions of good and evil? 

18 POST SCRIPTUM

My artistic language 

the way of my communication with the world 

has changed since that war 


19

I don’t agree with that idea. I can’t say that the world has 

turned black and white. Our emotions have become increasingly 

nuanced and fundamental to our understanding 

of the world around us. If anything, colours have gained 

definition and become more vivid, rather than becoming 

blacker and whiter. We’re surrounded by many colours, 

quite a few of them representing various forms of good. 

The evil in my paintings, however, remains black. 

There has been a war in your homeland for over a month. 

You have stayed in Kiev, a city under siege. We’re observing 

the war from behind the safety of our own borders. 

Above all, we are filled with admiration for the incredible 

attitude shown by Ukrainians defending their country. 

You have demonstrated remarkable dignity and restraint 

with respect to the wrongs and suffering inflicted on you; 

no complaints, no self-pity It’s extraordinary. This attitude 

shares similarities with the contemplation of an icon, with 

full awareness of the meaning of what is happening. 

In the beginning, there were a few days of shock. For me, for 

my family, for everyone. Eventually however, I realized that 

I had to create new work – to show a new reality. Naturally, 

many questions arose – from my artistic point of view, there 

was a seeming dearth of colours and words to express this 

tragedy. I have noticed that my own artistic language, the 

way I communicate with the world, has changed since the 

start of the war. 

For several years I have been drawing on paper with watercolors. 

Recently, this has proved to be a particularly useful 

technique, as it gives me the ability to bring my ideas to life 

quickly. 

In the visual sphere, we are dealing with real images of 

death again, not metaphorical ones. Images of dying kings, 

saints, and knights who fell in combat against evil; images of 

the slaughter of innocents; medieval memes are all making 

a return. It seems that the work of iconographers has particular 

significance and meaning today. 

In this terrible time of war for Ukraine, does art provide 

a reprieve - for its creator, the creator’s family, and the 

audience - from self-doubt and crushing despair? 

It’s impossible to say at this point. We’re under constant 

risk of death. We’re in danger of witnessing the destruction 

of our entire culture and heritage. I’m still making new 

work, just to survive these nightmarish days and nights. 

But since the onset of the war, I’ve stopped painting icons. 

There is not enough peace in my heart to continue this 

sacred art. [MK] 


The work of an icon painter 

has a special meaning 

and message today 


21

poem: 

MichaŁ ZabŁocki 

ONE RUSSIAN WARSHIP 

sailing and sailing for very many years 

our good big brother, the best of all our friends 

people are looking and waving hands at him 

may he stay far out and never enter in 

from land to land now, across so many seas 

sailing and sailing until it’s near our place! 

through the loudhailer they’re shouting on and on 

hello there! wake up! your time has also come! 

one Russian warship will do 

with super heroes aboard 

one Russian warship will do 

give in or we’ll take a shot! 

how can it be then, we’re crying bitter tears! 

it can’t be dreamt of in all our wildest dreams! 

some white flags flying, you see them flapping white 

I know this feeling, I know it inside out! 

we’ve feared too long now to send that warship down 

because it should have been sunk so long ago! 

before it’s shooting to kill just all of us 

people will surely surrender many times 

one Russian warship will sink 

let’s start the fight and do well 

one Russian warship will sink 

one shot and… go fuck yourself! 


Translated by Zdzisław Zabierzewski

GRAPHICS: AGATA DĘBICKA 


23

people(?) to People 

People who act inhumanly 

are no longer human 

1. 

There are moments in life when there is nothing you can 

say, when whatever you say is insufficient, as the burden 

of misfortune is just unimaginable. This has repeated itself 

throughout history, since Cain. What connects that 

biblical murderer with contemporary ones? The urge to 

dominate, enslave, abuse, humiliate ... In other words: 

power, the lust for which releases all moral restraints. 

It causes hearts to shrink into deadly stones, and consciences 

to pale and fade into maddened minds at the 

whispers of the devil himself. The vision of absolute power, 

over family, state, and the world, is blinding. Power regardless 

of the costs, without taking anyone or anything 

into account. 

It might seem that humankind, having seen millions of 

victims perish and suffer in successive wars over the centuries, 

would have reached a stage of development that 

would allow them to focus on making the world safer and 

its inhabitants better. To deal with diseases and epidemics 

and be able to save their dying nature. Surprisingly, 

the caveman mentality has not changed at all. It just that 

the props are becoming more and more perfidious – clubs 

have been replaced by rockets. Regardless, the effect remains 

the same: tears, blood, and senseless deaths. This 

has been happening shockingly close to us, with death 

among both the attackers and the defenders, old and 

young. We are not talking about toy soldiers, but people 

of flesh and blood, wanting to live ordinary lives. The evil 

that is born in insane minds is unimaginable. 

All dictators ended badly, a faith awaiting the current 

ones sooner or later. What hurts the most is the fact that, 

before they end up in the darkest corners of hell, they will 

instigate so much evil and start fires that will not be extinguished 

by the rain of oblivion. These are people without 

hearts and consciences. 

2. 


I was in Ukraine some years ago and I still remember 

some things vividly about that stay: a glass of strong vodka 

drunk in one gulp with the owner of the hotel just before 

dinner, which, despite being different from “European” 

standards, had an aura of deliberate cordiality. Faith 

locked in churches, with beautiful icons and baroque 

altars; with the silent wisdom of cemeteries; wandering 

around castles with a common history. Meetings with 

Poles who have lived there for generation. Kids expecting 

sweets from us. Singing Polish-Ukrainian songs by a bonfire. 

The Lvov opera, filled with angelic voices. Stories that 

mix heroism with cruelty. Vast expanses of fertile land. 

An arduous journey towards Europe after regaining their 

independence. Later, I met Ukrainian poets who sang and 

recited their own poems. 

I brought a beautiful, though small, icon in a silver dress 

back from that trip, bought at the market with all the 

money I had because I liked it so much. This Ukrainian (or 

perhaps Polish) Mother of God with Child, hanging above 

my desk, greets me every single day, invoking tears for 

sixteen days. 

3. 

Something unimaginably cruel has just happened, something 

you might connect with nightmares or disaster films, 

the directors of which expose us to unimaginable horrors. 

However, this isn’t a bad dream, nor a violence-infested 

movie. This horror is happening as we speak, much too 

close for comfort. War, a word that for some might conjure 

up glory and heroism, but which all too often conceals 

the vastness of misfortunes of children and old people, 

men, and women, entangled in a terrible machine 

launched by mentally ill individuals. Would someone in 

their right mind consciously condemn masses of innocent 

people to death, cause inhuman suffering and tear up 

the lives of millions of innocent people? Not to mention 

sending their own people to death in the name of criminal 

ideologies to enslave entire nations? 

As if “ordinary” misfortunes were insufficient to cause 

suffering – as if cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, depression, 

and hundreds of other diseases that plague people 

were not enough. It is difficult to discount victims of car 

accidents, or the aftermath of a pandemic that we still 

have to come to terms with.

By in what categories do people who cause wars 

think? It is simply beyond my imagination. Don’t 

they have their own precious loved ones, or have 

they perhaps never been loved? How is it that 

they behave as if they were without conscience, 

without heart, without humanity? They tend to 

addict their closest associates and even entire 

nations with their inhuman charisma. The world 

saw some clear examples of this phenomenon in 

Hitler and Stalin. Although it seemed that history 

would not repeat itself, the truth is there for all 

of us to see. Why does so much evil breed in crazy 

minds, turning insanity into reality, making it 

measurable in the number of casualties, wounded, 

people made homeless, hopelessly trying to 

cross borders, seeking sanctuary? Their world 

has literally collapsed on them – so many ruined 

cities, villages, houses, hospitals, and schools. 

Pregnant women giving birth in bombarded 

hospitals, people terrified every time they hear 

alarms, horrific photos of heartbroken people 

saying their last goodbye to loved ones covered 

in blood – all manifestations of cruelty without 

any limits! 

How will those who survive ever function normally 

again, their minds haunted by traumatic 

memories that cannot be erased? Will they be 

looked after abroad by some good-natured people? 

Will they be able to return to their demolished 

houses so they can painstakingly rebuild 

them? 

Nobody will be able to undo the injustice suffered, 

nor the cruelty that was unleashed. The 

only possible remedy, as always, might be time 

– pain may slowly fade, although it might take 

a generation or two before these deep wounds 

might be healed. 

4 

Even those of us lucky enough to have been born after 

World War II, able to live our lives without armed conflict, 

still inherited it from our parents. It seems that the stories 

of those who experienced the war have somehow been 

passed on in our genes. People who survived the war witnessed 

how the world was turned upside down. There 

were victims in almost every family, including my grandmother 

Zofia, beaten to death by the “liberating” Russian 

soldiers; my father, who died prematurely of a heart condition, 

after five years of captivity and forced labour in 

the mines in Wałbrzych; my mother, who heard the whistle 

of bullets around her head for the rest of her life. They 

never got the most beautiful years of their youth back. 

I can still see the helmets, bomb fragments, unexploded 

shells, the nameless graves in the forest, bayonets found 

in a garbage can. 

We were naïve to think that, believing in humanity, our 

advanced civilization, the exchange of goods, technology, 

and labour, would effectively protect the peaceful coexistence 

of nations, even if they believe in different political 

systems. We were wrong to turn a blind eye to subsequent 

annexations and ever greater claims that were 

made by a delusional leader – claims that rendered human 

life worthless, aiming to achieve more power. These 

sickly ambitious fantasies were realized bloodily, using the 

most perfidious types of weapons. 

The only comfort in all of this is that is has united the majority 

of a largely divided world. Most nations strongly disapproves 

of this and steps are being taken to try to stop 

the madmen – this time no longer through appeals and 

empty words, but through concrete joint actions of states. 

Actions aimed at making life worth living, rather than resort 

to war games, which would require sacrifices in casualties 

and destroyed houses that would need to be rebuilt. 

However, there would be no way to resurrect the fallen. 

I am constantly bothered by the question: how is it possible 

that in people’s minds house such insane visions (that 

later, unfortunately, are implemented)? This is more proof 

of the existence of evil, which is so difficult to overcome 

with goodness, of the existence of the devil trying to rule 

the world in various ways. 

“People prepared this fate for people,” wrote Zofia 

Nałkowska at the beginning of the shocking „Medallions”. 

Nevertheless, I do not agree with this statement of the 

writer, since people who act inhumanly are no longer human. 

[JW] 


25

Illustrations 

P a w e ł K u c z y ń s k i 


Crown

A 

r 

t 

i 

s 

t 

s 

Together 

F 

o 

r 

U 

k 

r 

a 

i 

n 

e 

Strong Ukraine 


27

*** 

H a ś k a 

S z y j a n 

Haśka Szyjan (1980) – Ukrainian writer, 

poet and translator. She lives in Lvov and 

Kiev. One third of her debut novel, “Hunt, 

Doctor, Hunt”, was written on a mobile 

phone. Her second novel, “Za spynoju”, 

published in 2019, was the first Ukrainian 

novel to be given the European Union Literature 

Award and it also won prizes in 

Ukraine: the Espresso television readers’ 

award and the LitAccent of the Year 

award. She translated DBC Pierre’s “Lights 

out in Wonderland”. Szyjan also created 

the ‘Batrachomiomachia Art Project. Her 

poetry has been published in Poland in Babiniec 

Literacki and Slaska Strefa Gender, 

translated by Aneta Kaminska. 

Slippers on high heels 

at the humanitarian post 

by the borderline, 

amongst children’s clothes 

and hardly worn UGGs, 

standing, the last ones 

in the line, 

so inadequate and lost, 

as if they were listening 

to the distant echo 

of interrupted shelling 

and want to escape 

but lack the courage – 

perhaps it’s right here, 

just like the fortune-telling 

on St. Andrew’s Day: 

the first across the threshold 

should be ready to get married. 

They are as inadequate 

as human sensuality, 

locked within monastery walls, 

where every opportunity 

to focus on yourself is a sin. 

Like a summer job 

as a cashier at a public toilet, 

a girl – a teenager, 

with the looks 

for a Vogue photoshoot. 

She licks her fingers, 

counts the banknotes 

that a while ago fell to the floor 

and looks, 

like a frog-like dame 

she adjusts the band in front of the mirror, 

licking her fingers again, 

the same that dropped the banknotes 

and picked them up. 

She lost her golden earrings 

on her birthday, of all days – 

she suspects it was a relative, 

although in fact the children 

accidentally wrapped them in a napkin 

and threw them in the rubbish bin. 

An old man plays the Lambada on his violin, 

accompanying this inadequateness, 

underlining 

that in the modern world 

it is easy to combine 

a kippah and wireless headphones, 

a Ukraine t-shirt and a taped forehead, 

a girl in a uniform and a civilian boy. 

However, here the slippers 

have no idea 

what to stick to, 

to cover the eyes 

with an arm, a watch 

on the wrist, 

and then the ears 

because they don’t know 

whether behind the door 

to which they so desperately 

want to run 

there’ll be barking dogs, 

if people argue, 

whether the noise is from dust cars, ice rinks, 

or military equipment. 


K a t e r y n a 

M i c h a l i c y n a 

(SIMPLE THINGS) 

children knock down the last apples from a naked tree 

someone knocks down a plane 

for some it’s easier that way 

because they’ve forgotten: apple 

stick 

in the transparent orchard 

where there is nothing 

but wind 

and naked trees 

and the most natural motion: 

throw and catch 

you can’t catch a plane 

even the Earth is powerless 

and the angels 

let alone little you 

you can’t catch a plane 

can’t catch it 

in the naked sky 

there are no branches 

to get stuck in 

children are laughing 

and knock down 

red-cheeked 

wormy 

sun-dried 

apples 

Translated by Arco Van Ieperen 

Kateryna Michalicyna (1982) – poet, translator, 

editor. Born in the Rivne region, she 

now lives in Lvov. She has a degree in biology 

from Rivne University and English philology 

from Lvov Ivana Franki University. Michalicyna 

works as assistant-editor at Old Lvov 

Publishing. She has published volumes of poetry: 

Powiń (2002), Pilihrym (2003) and Tiń u 

dzerkali (2014), as well as books for children: 

Babusyna hospoda, Łuhowa liryka, Chro roste 

u parku, and Pro drakoniw i szczastia. She 

has translated books by J.R.R. Tolkien, Oscar 

Wilde, and Sylvia Plath. She has translated 

Tomka w krainie kangurów (2011) by Alfred 

Szklarski from Polish. Her work has been published 

in Poland in “Radar” and the anthology 

“East-West. Poems for Ukraine” 


29

MyDogSighs 

CARDIFF 


STREET ART 

for UKRAIne 

JenksArt 

LLANELLI OLD CASTLE 


31

JenksArt 

PORT TALBOT, SOUTH WALES 

32 


POST SCRIPTUM 33

Zdjecie z prywatnych zbiorów Maximiliano Bagnasco 

Maximiliano Bagnasco 

ARGENTINA 


No 

to 

War! 


35

©Julien_Malland 

Seth Globepainter 

& Aleksey Kislow 

KIEV 


©Julien_Malland 

Seth Globepainter 

PARIS 

ART AGAINST WAR 


37

KAWU 

Poznań Poland 


stop war! 

WOSKerski 

SHOREDITCH, LONDON, UK 


39

J O H N D ’ O H 

CLEVEDON, UK BRISTOL, UK 


P i e k s a 

KRAKÓW 

POLAND 


41


Christian Guémy 

PARIS

T 

U 

T 

U 

Indonesia 


43

STAMFORD, UK 

Paul Kneen Art 


S E F 

Venice Beach 

Los Angeles, California 


45


ChemiS P R A G U E 

DMITRY PROŠKIN (1986, Uralsk, 

Kazakhstan), performing under the 

pseudonym Chemis, is a Czech street 

art artist with Kazakh roots, mainly 

creating murals, i.e. large-format 

colorful paintings on walls. 

His street-art work, like many of today’s 

leading Czech artists of this genre, 

began with graffiti, from which he 

gradually turned to creating murals. 

One of his greatest achievements was 

the invitation to showcase his work on 

the main wall of the Hall of Fame in 

New York, the place where the graffiti 

culture was born. 

Chemis became well-known to Czech 

audiences thanks to the iconic image 

of crying President Masaryk. 

The artist created many murals in 

which he criticized world politics 

or depicted current burning topics. 

On his wall paintings he portrayed, 

amongst others, President Trump in 

front of a broken wall.He fiercely opposed 

terrorist attacks in France and 

also condemns racism. [PS] 


47

DEFIANTLY 

He stood petrified in the town square, 

facing south, facing the pending invasion. 

Unflinching he waited as all around 

artillery fire destroyed buildings, plumes of 

black acrid smoke billowed from walls and 

windows, debris lay scattered in the streets. 

In defiance he stood his ground as all around 

was turned to smoke and dust. 

Inhabitants had long gone, shops emptied, 

contents smashed, wrecked, or strewn. 

The town no longer in turmoil, just desolate, 

yet he still stood waiting. 

Then it came, with one almighty explosion, 

he was gone, all that remained was a crater 

surrounded by scattered rubble, his remains 

now just twisted metal in the dust. 

Ten metres away his sculpted head lay 

in the settling dust, no longer a monument 

to the history of this once proud town. 

Defiantly he still looked south, watching 

as the tanks rolled past, followed by 

Putin’s marauders. 

POEMS 

A l l a n M u r r e l l 

UKRAINE 

We see walking and running legs, 

rubble lying on the ground, 

smoke swirling, 

a glimpse of railings, 

ash and scorch marks. 

The camera image swinging, 

legs running in a park 

and on paving, 

bomb craters. 

Army fatigued figures 

stand motionless, 

mobile phones in hands. 

Women and children 

queuing to get on trains, 

their only possessions 

an overnight bag. 

These images beamed 

around the planet 

to every household TV, 

we sit watching 

in stunned incredulity, 

then we quietly start to weep. 

foto: Pixabay 


Spring Cleaning 

R a d o s ł a w R u c i ń s k i 


49


C o n q u e r o r 

Voytek Glinkowski 

P 

o 

l 

i 

s 

h 

A 

r 

t 

i 

s 

t 

s 

f 

o 

r 

U 

k 

r 

a 

i 

n 

e 


51

ILYA KAMINSKY 

on Ukrainian, Russian, and 

the Language of War 

„How can one speak about, write about, war” 

1. 

My family huddled by the doorframe 

at 4 am, debating whether or not to 

open the door to the stranger wearing 

only his pyjama pants, who’d 

been pounding on the door for at 

least five minutes, waking the whole 

apartment complex. Seeing the light 

come on, he began shouting through 

the door. 

“Remember me? I helped you haul 

your refrigerator from Pridnestrovie. 

Remember? We talked about Pasternak 

on the drive. Two hours! Tonight, 

they bombed the hospital. My sister 

is a nurse there. I stole someone’s 

truck and drove across the border. 

I don’t know anyone else. Can I make 

a phone call?” 

So, the war stepped its shoeless foot 

into my childhood two decades ago, 

under the guise of a half-naked man 

gulping on the phone, victim of an 

early post-Soviet “humanitarian aid” 

campaign. 

2. 

During a recent visit to Ukraine, my 

friend the poet Boris Khersonsky and 

I agreed to meet at a neighbourhood 

café in the morning to talk about 

Pasternak (as if he is all anyone talks 

about, in our part of the world). But 

when I walked up the sidewalk at 

9 am, the sidewalk tables were overturned, 

and rubble was strewn into 

the street from where the building 

had been bombed. 


Living many hundreds of miles from 

Ukraine, away from this war, in my 

comfortable American backyard, 

what right do I have to write about 

this war? — and yet I cannot stop 

writing about it. 

A crowd, including local media, was 

gathered around Boris as he spoke 

out against the bombings, against yet 

another fake humanitarian aid campaign 

of Putin’s. Some clapped; others 

shook their heads in disapproval. 

A few months later, the doors, floors, 

and windows of Boris’s apartment 

were blown up. 

There are many stories like this. They 

are often shared in short, hurried 

sentences, and then the subject is 

changed abruptly. 

“Truthful war books,” Orwell wrote, 

“are never acceptable to non-combatants.” 

When Americans ask about recent 

events in Ukraine, I think of these 

lines from Boris’s poem: 

people carry explosives around the 

city in plastic shopping bags and little 

suitcases. 

3. 

Over the last twenty years, Ukraine 

has been governed by both the Russian-speaking 

East and the Ukrainian-speaking 

West. The government 

periodically uses “the language issue” 

to incite conflict and violence, 

an effective distraction from the real 

problems at hand. The most recent 

conflict arose in response to the inadequate 

policies of President Yanukovych, 

who has since escaped 

to Russia. Yanukovych was universally 

acknowledged as the most corrupt 

president the country has ever 

known (he’d been charged with rape 

and assault, among other things, 

all the way back to Soviet times). 

However, these days, Ukraine’s new 

government continues to include oligarchs 

and professional politicians 

with shrewd pedigrees and questionable 

motivations. 

When the standoff between the Yanukovych 

government and crowds of 

protesters first began in 2013, and the 

embattled President left the country 

shortly thereafter, Putin sent his 

troops into Crimea, a Ukrainian territory, 

under the pretext of passionately 

protecting the Russian-speaking 

population. Soon, the territory was 

annexed. In a few months, under the 

pretext of humanitarian aid, more 

Russian military forces were sent into 

another Ukrainian territory, Donbas, 

where a proxy war has begun. 

All along the protection of Russian 

language was continually cited as the 

sole reason for the annexation and 

hostilities. 

Does the Russian language in 

Ukraine need this protection? In response 

to Putin’s occupation, many 

Russian-speaking Ukrainians chose 

to stand with their Ukrainian- speaking 

neighbours, rather than against

them. When the conflict began to 

ramp up, I received this e-mail: 

I, Boris Khersonsky, work at Odessa 

National University where I have 

directed the department of clinical 

psychology since 1996. All that time 

I have been teaching in Russian, and 

no one has ever reprimanded me for 

“ignoring” the official Ukrainian language 

of the state. I am more or less 

proficient in the Ukrainian language, 

but most of my students prefer lectures 

in Russian, and so I lecture in 

that language. 

I am a Russian language poet; my 

books have been published mostly 

in Moscow and St. Petersburg. My 

scholarly work has been published 

there as well. 

Never (do you hear me—NEVER!) did 

anyone go after me for being a Russian 

poet and for teaching in Russian 

language in Ukraine. Everywhere 

I read my poems in RUSSIAN and never 

did I encounter any complications. 

However, tomorrow I will read my 

lectures in the state language— 

Ukrainian. This won’t be merely 

a lecture—it will be a protest action 

in solidarity with the Ukrainian state. 

I call for my colleagues to join me in 

this action. 

A Russian-language poet refuses to 

lecture in Russian as an act of solidarity 

with occupied Ukraine. As time 

passed, other such emails began to 

arrive from poets and friends. My 

cousin Peter wrote from Odessa: 

Our souls are worried, and we are 

frightened, but the city is safe. Once 

in a while some idiots rise up and announce 

that they are for Russia. But 

we in Odessa never told anyone that 

we are against Russia. Let Russians 

do whatever they want in their Moscow 

and let them love our Odessa 

as much as they want—but not with 

this circus of soldiers and tanks! 

Another friend, the Russian-speaking 

poet Anastasia Afanasieva, wrote 

from the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv 

about Putin’s “humanitarian aid” 

campaign to protect her language: 

In the past five years, I visited the 

Ukrainian-speaking Western Ukraine 

six times. I have never felt discriminated 

against because I spoke the 

Russian language. Those are myths. 

In all the cities of Western Ukraine 

I have visited, I spoke with everyone 

in Russian—in stores, in trains, in 

cafes. I have found new friends. Far 

from feeling aggression, everyone instead 

treated me with respect. I beg 

you, do not listen to the propaganda. 

Its purpose is to separate us. We 

are already very different, let’s not 

become opposite, let’s not create a 

war on the territory where we all live 

together. The military invasion which 

is taking place right now is the catastrophe 

for us all. Let’s not lose our 

minds, let’s not be afraid of non-existent 

threats, when there is a real 

threat: the Russian army’s invasion. 

As I read the letter after letter, 

I couldn’t stop thinking about Boris’s 

refusal to speak his own language 

as an act of protest against the military 

invasion. What does it mean for 

a poet to refuse to speak his own language? 

Is language a place you can leave? Is 

language a wall you can cross? What 

is on the other side of that wall? 

4. 

ILYA KAMINSKY is the author of the acclaimed poetry 

collection Deaf Republic, which was called a work of “profound 

imagination” by The New Yorker and was a finalist for the 

2019 National Book Award in Poetry. He is also the author of 

Dancing In Odessa and Musica Humana. His poems have been 

translated into numerous languages and his books have been 

published in many countries. In the late 1990s, Kaminsky co-founded 

Poets For Peace, an organization that sponsors poetry 

readings in the US and abroad. He currently holds the Bourne 

Chair in Poetry and is Director of Poetry@Tech at Georgia Tech. 

Every poet refuses the onslaught of 

language. This refusal manifests itself 

in silence illuminated by the meanings 

of poetic lexis—the meanings 

not of what the word says, but of 

what it withholds. As Maurice Blanchot 

wrote, “To write is to be absolutely 

distrustful of writing, while entrusting 

oneself to it entirely.” 

The language of poetry may or may 

not change us, but it shows the 

changes within us. 

Ukraine today is a place where statements 

like this one are put to the 

test. Another writer, John Berger, 

says this about the relationship of 

a person to one’s language: “One can 

say of language that it is potentially 

the only human home.” He insisted 

that it was “the only dwelling place 

that cannot be hostile to man… One 

can say anything to language. This is 

why it is a listener, closer to us than 

any silence or any god.” But what 

happens when a poet refuses his language 

as a form of protest? 

Or, to put this question in broader 

terms: what happens to language in 

wartime? Abstractions very quickly 

attain physical attributes. This is how 

the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska 

sees her own body watching 

the war around her: Buried in a human 

neck, a bullet looks like an eye, 

sewn in. The poet Kateryna Kalytko’s 

war is also a physical body: War often 

comes along and lies down between 

you like a child / afraid to be 

left alone. 

The language of poetry may or may 

not change us, but it shows the 

changes within us: the poet Anastasia 

Afanasieva writes using the 

first-person plural “we,” showing us 

how the occupation of a country affects 

all its citizens, no matter which 

language they speak: 

when a four-wheeler with a mortar 

passed down the street 

we didn’t ask who you are 

whose side are you on 

we fell down on the floor and lay there. 


53

5. 

On another visit to Ukraine, I saw 

a former neighbour of mine, now 

crippled by war, holding his hand 

out on the street. He wasn’t wearing 

any shoes. As I hurried by, hoping he 

wouldn’t recognize me, I was suddenly 

brought up short by his empty 

hand. As if he were handing me his 

war. 

As I walked away from him, I had 

an eerie feeling of recognition. How 

similar his voice, the voices of the 

Ukrainian poets I’ve been speaking 

with, to the voices of people in Afghanistan 

and Iraq, whose houses my 

own tax money has destroyed. 

6. 

In the late 20th century, the Jewish 

poet Paul Celan became a patron 

saint of writing in the midst of crisis. 

Composing in the German language, 

he has broken speech to reflect the 

experience of a new, violated world. 

This effect is happening again—this 

time in Ukraine—before our very 

eyes. 

Here is the case of poet Lyuba Yakimchuk, 

whose family are refugees 

from Pervomaisk, the city which is 

one of the main targets of Putin’s 

most recent “humanitarian aid” effort. 

Answering my questions about 

her background, Lyuba responded: 

I was born and raised in the war-torn 

Luhansk region and my hometown 

of Pervomaisk is now occupied. In 

May 2014 I witnessed the beginning 

of the war . . . In February 2015, my 

parents and grandmother, having 

survived dreadful warfare, set out to 

leave the occupied territory. They left 

under shelling fire, with a few bags of 

clothes. A friend of mine, a [Ukrainian] 

soldier, almost shot my grandma 

as they fled. 

Discussing literature in wartime, 

Yakimchuk writes: “Literature rivals 

with the war, perhaps even loses to 

war in creativity, hence literature is 

changed by war.” In her poems, one 

sees how warfare cleaves her words: 

“don’t talk to me about Luhansk,” 

she writes, “it’s long since turned 

into hansk / Lu had been razed to the 

ground / to the crimson pavement.” 


The bombed-out city of Pervomaisk 

“has been split into pervo and maisk” 

and the shell of Debaltsevo is now 

her “deb, alts, evo.” Through the 

prism of this fragmented language, 

the poet sees herself: 

I stare into the horizon 

. . . I have gotten so very old 

no longer Lyuba 

just a –ba. 

Just as Russian-language poet Khersonsky 

refuses to speak his language 

when Russia occupies Ukraine, 

Yakimchuk, a Ukrainian-language 

poet, refuses to speak an unfragmented 

language as the country is 

fragmented in front of her eyes. As 

she changes the words, breaking 

them down and counterpointing the 

sounds from within the words, the 

sounds testify to a knowledge they 

do not possess. No longer lexical yet 

still legible to us, the wrecked word 

confronts the reader mutely, both 

within and beyond language. 

Reading this poem of witness, one is 

reminded that poetry is not merely 

a description of an event; it is an 

event. 

7. 

what right 

do I have to 

write about 

this war? 

What exactly is the poetry’s witness? 

The language of poetry may 

or may not change us, but it shows 

the changes within us. Like a seismograph, 

it registers violent occurrences. 

Miłosz titled his seminal text 

The Witness of Poetry “not because 

we witness it, but because it witnesses 

us.” Living on the other side of the 

Iron Curtain, Zbigniew Herbert told 

us something similar: a poet is like 

a barometer for the psyche of a nation. 

It cannot change the weather. But it 

shows us what the weather is like. 

8. 

Can examining the case of a lyric 

poet really show us something that 

is shared by many—the psyche of 

a nation? the music of a time? 

How is it that a lyric poet’s spine 

trembles like a barometer’s needle? 

Perhaps this is because lyric poet is 

a very private person: in her or his 

privacy this individual creates a language—evocative 

enough, strange 

enough—that enables her or him to 

speak, privately, to many people at 

the same time. 

9. 

Living many hundreds of miles from 

Ukraine, away from this war, in my 

comfortable American backyard, 

what right do I have to write about 

this war? — and yet I cannot stop 

writing about it: cannot stop mulling 

over the words by poets of my country 

in English, this language they do 

not speak. Why this obsession? Between 

sentences is the silence I do 

not control. Even though it is a different 

language, the silence between 

sentences is still the same: it is the 

space in which I see a family still 

huddled by the doorframe at 4 am, 

debating whether or not to open the 

door to the stranger, wearing only 

his pyjama pants, who is shouting 

through the doorframe.[IK]

IN THE CAGE 

Piotr Kamieniarz 


55

G e o r g e W r i g h t 

“War is a crime against humanity. I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support 

any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of the causes of war” 

The pledge of the Peace Pledge Union 

ABUSES OF POWER 

A DREAM WORTH HAVING 

Let’s invent some weapons of peace 

Fill grenades with apple blossom 

Make bullets of Turkish delight 

And the only gas would be laughing gas 

So we’d laugh into the night 


Mines in the road made of liquorice 

Knives would be of balsa wood 

Drones fashioned from sherbet saucers 

To give just hiccups would be good 


Declare all other types illegal 

We might just permit gob stopper stones 

Chocolate bombs and cola gas warfare 

Bomb shelters become candy floss homes 


Put the best minds to work, none to shirk 

Are my suggestions so terribly mad? 

Just look at the money invested in death 

Don’t you feel incredibly sad? 

*** 

A wise hawk would know 

That it cannot snatch up an 

Eagle in its beak 

The money mogul’s hold their fire, 

Not so the Russian troops, 

They turn a home to a funeral pyre 

While we dither and jump through hoops. 

‘We’ll calibrate our response’ we say, 

We wont hurry to cut off SWIFT cash, 

As the oligarchs hide their wealth away 

And the tanks continue their dash. 

The only calibration comes from their guns 

And when we finally wake up to the tyrant’s game 

It’s too late for a nations daughter’s and son’s. 

We should hang our heads in shame 

THE WINTER SOLDIER 

The winter soldier has ice in his heart, 

He will do whatever he’s told, 

He’s not complete, he’s just a part, 

Of a machine to take and to hold. 

The winter soldier will aim his rifle 

At whatever stands in his way 

Opposing voices he will stifle, 

Only his orders have any sway. 

The winter soldier has no guilt, 

No sense of right or wrong, 

No concern for any blood that’s spilt 

Or of being where he doesn’t belong. 

The winter soldier aims the rocket 

That splinters family home’s 

He holds many lives in his pocket, 

Not bothered by their burning bones. 

The winter soldier isn’t called to account, 

He’s only doing as he’s been told, 

And all his dark deeds he will discount 

As being daring, brave and bold. 

The winter soldier feels no fright 

But there’ll be visits in the years ahead, 

Ghosts will point their fingers in the night, 

And he will meet the many dead. 


RC POST SCRIPTUM 

57

58 


TATIANA AVERINA 

U k r a i n e 


59

obraz olejny 80x100 

BOGNA JARZEMSKA-MISZTALSKA 

Three wishes 


m a g g i e h a l l 

Voices of War 

Weaponry powered through political fear. 

A dark forest lost people. Shifting built spaces, as guided paths trick. 

Commitment to task, controlled nature. Outcome handing death to chaos. 

Training minds to hate and follow, an unordered order of jackals. 

Words of deconstructing fear. Propagating monster, rape and pillage, 

a system betrayed by raged violence. Blood meridian meteor showers. 

War the highest art canvassing death. Blood turns, life cycles, telephone 

lines escape. Baron lands divide peeling away toughened skin, veiled behind 

violence. Where does it begin and end? As the justice of truth lies in pain. 

A political cold case; Summary; Resolution; Intelligence. In a database of 

fingerprints, agenda and resolutions. Evidence of investigation collected 

and assessed. This last phase of speech hung by wars gate. Working to pay 

off another life, timing out the clock strikes nine. Beds left unmade for the 

final visit. 

Trust as the postman waits 

Trust as communications cut 

Trust as the knife breaks innocent skin 

Nine black angels in a warning of fire. Dancing in a threaded waltz, touching 

each other. A beautiful murder under the rain, a passage into the next day. 

A warning that yesterday is still awake. Today I witnessed the beginning 

of the last end. A woman nine months pregnant, an intravenous drip. 

Synthetic locks, gold sheathing the wanton chest. There in a solitude stands 

the lady looking down. filtering light through a purple haze, indigo dreams 

weave her into a day from past-future shades of grey. Silently another arm 

turns to cradle, touching the place where her child may once have been. 

Washing away the ghost of nine months. A collection of memories final 

play, a statue pink and grey. Nameless although named. 

Antiquity 


61

62 


Iwona Siwek-Front 


63


E X O D U S

Iwona Siwek-Front 


65

Serce mi pęka. 

Malowałam ten obraz i niejedna łza spadła na paletę, mieszając się z farbami... 

E w a K l o n o w s k a 


Exodus

NEVER THIS MUCH EVIL 

The Russian aggressors 

Pretend to be like 

American heroes 

In their own right 

Their hatred drips 

Like flowing sweat 

And their blades and fire 

Stun innocents 

Many Ukrainians have died 

Many have been displaced 

Since foggy February 

And that year last year 

They could not call 

Any Russians heroes 

Because the invaders 

Only ripped and tore 

The Russian troops 

Are as far from being heroes 

As Earth is from the farthest stars 

And children weep in fear 

The Russians have struck 

And drawn blood 

There has never been 

This much evil 

THE MAN ON HIS FACE 

Lying in disgrace 

The man on his face 

With his hands tied behind his back 

His breath gone for good 

A glimpse of him 

And a stifled scream 

Make it real that death 

Is reigning in Ukraine 

For all those who died 

Our eyes have cried 

We’ve clung on to hope 

For the others 

More slaughter continues 

Every day in the news 

That man reminds us 

Of how freedom cries 

M u h a m m a d 

K h u r r a m S a l i m 

IN PAIN SOME LAUGHTER 

Those kids in the Ukraine 

They were laughing in the rain 

They had their toys 

Little cars for boys 

Their mothers wiped tears 

They were born to care 

Children running among ruins 

Loving what they were doing 

Those little feet 

And eyes to greet 

Saw a sky of blue 

They wanted to fly up to 

Those children of war 

Under the silver stars 

Dreamt of heaven 

And played again 

SITTING ON OUR HANDS 

The rest of the world 

Sits on its hands 

Doing nothing for Ukraine 

We watch the world’s suffering 

With no heed for woes 

We only like ourselves 

Our hearts are hardened 

By the harsh realities of life 

We can’t see beyond 

Our everyday cares 

And headaches … the stuff 

The devils spit at us 

We sit on our hands 

As the victims’ hands burn 

We protect our hands 

As they have theirs mangled 

One day we will sit up 

And take notice 

When our skies will signal 

The invasion of evil 


67

Things haven’t been right since last summer 


We are not talking to the bear 

ARTUR ZIENKO 


69


Symphony of the Love 

Colors vs War 

ALIREZA KARIMI 

MOGHADDAM 

I R A N 


71

L O R A I N E S A A C K S 

BEYOND THE CAVES 

I’m deep underground in Chislehurst Caves, 

With Messerschmitts raining their bombs down in waves. 

Tea trolleys and bunks and medical teams, 

Air Raid Wardens, some clergy, a few frantic screams. 

NO VICTORY IN CHISLEHURST 

Huddled up in our haunt while the harsh Heinkels taunt 

I’m three and I think it’s good fun. 

How would I know, that while I’m lying low, 

My cousins are killed by the Hun? 

The war was over, victory ours, 

Soldiers welcomed home with flowers. 

But were we whole? Were we content? 

We children knew not what grief meant. 

My Grandpa is silent, he’s too shocked to speak 

My sorrowing Grandma has tears on her cheek. 

I’m of immigrant stock, barely four decades, 

Half my family in Poland are shunted by raids. 

Yet, one lifetime later, I’m asked to embrace, 

To forget and forgive the supposed Master Race. 

I’ve inherited photos; viewed the Shoah website 

It’s my ‘living memory’ that I’m asked to blight. 

Should future millennia institute change, 

And mind-sets of violence be spurned, 

Maybe such a truce would serve to diffuse, 

Warring factions where memories still burned. 

But while I’m still alive, my bloodline will hear, 

Poems 

Our dear beloved matriarch 

Became reclusive, lost her spark. 

Her kith and kin could not take flight, 

For Bergen-Belsen was their plight. 

Grandma knew, by letters vanished, 

Her loved ones to the camp were banished. 

No word was heard – her heart bore pain; 

Who could conceive whole families slain? 

We saw our grandma’s weeping eyes, 

We heard her moaning, anguished cries. 

But we were small, all fours and fives, 

No-one explained about smashed lives. 

How their forbears were smitten with fear. 

Historical footnotes, a tapestry yarn, airbrushing out wails in the wind, 

Will never erase the actions so base, of the inhuman tyrants who sinned. 

76 72 


Matthew Dover 


7377

78 74 


I c o n s 

Yaryna 

Movchan 

U K R A I N E 


75 79 75

An artist with 

a brush, recreating 

the world 

during the war 

uses 

sharper shapes 

A wheel is a form in which I feel good. 

A body in a circle is relaxed, 

frozen in happiness. 

War is bad. 

It is the result 

of human 

weakness – 

a soul shortage. 


Y A R Y N A M O V C H A N 

U K R A I N E 


77


Anna 

Ponoma 

renko 

Ukraine 


79

Ryszard Kupidura, 

expert on Eastern Europe, 

translator, assistant 

professor at Adam 

Mickiewicz University 

in Poznań, Faculty 

of Modern Language 

Studies and Literatures, 

Institute of Russian and 

Ukrainian Studies, Department 

of Ukrainian 

Studies. Collaborating 

with the ANAGRAM 

Publishing House on 

an ongoing basis 

About literature and the war in Ukraine 

Ryszard Kupidura 

We simply cannot conceive of 

war. We cannot recreate or 

reenact the emotions that 

accompany a human being during 

war. The war in Ukraine, as we know, 

has been raging for eight years. Reporters 

who write about the conflict 

in Donbas were somewhat surprised 

to discover that, in regions located not 

far away from military activities, e.g. 

in Kramatorsk or Siewierodonieck, 

people tried to lead normal lives. 

However, if we really think about it, 

it ceases to surprise us. There actually 

is beauty in the fact that in places 

where people are able to find just a 

little free space, even the smallest 

piece of land without the aura of war, 

then they immediately get back to 

their daily affairs, children start to go 

to playgrounds again. Because war is 

just something completely inhumane, 

it creates an environment in which a 

human does not naturally exist. 


After 24 February, I have noticed 

different attitudes among readers. 

Some were unable to reach for literature 

during those days. There were at 

least two reasons for this. The most 

obvious one was being unable to focus 

on a book. Some, however, decided 

not to read due to the feeling 

of guilt. According to them, reading a 

book when other people are fighting 

or hiding from bombs would be ignoble. 

It is worth remembering, however, 

that staying within the world of 

literature does not necessarily mean 

we are ignorant. Quite the contrary 

– it can be our manifestation of humanity. 

This is supported by the words of 

Bogdan Kolomiychuk, who, as a current 

member of the Lviv Territorial 

Guard, wrote on Facebook that it 

had become extremely important for 

him that people still read his books 

and shared their thoughts on social 

media. He treats it as a reminiscence 

of his former life he already longs to 

and wants to come back to as soon as 

possible. 

I reckon the Ukrainian culture has 

become important for at least several 

reasons. On one hand, we naturally 

want to know more about the 

country and people who are going 

through this tragic time of their history. 

On the other hand, I think there is 

more to this specific Ukrainian case. 

As the Polish nation, we are a part of 

this history. At least because we have 

opened the doors to our homes for 

Ukrainians who are fleeing from war. 

Have you noticed that people who 

take in Ukrainians often do not refer 

to them as “refugees”, but instead 

as “guests”? They will say: “I’m having 

guests from Ukraine”. This is extremely 

significant. Language starts 

to react to the changing reality. A 

very special bond is now developing 

between Poles and Ukrainians. I 

would even say “brotherhood”, only 

if I did not remember what the Soviet 

and then Russian propaganda had 

made of the term “brother nations”. 

I expect that the language – I hope it 

will be the language of poetry at first 

– will find new metaphors to describe 

what is currently happening between 

us and Ukrainians. I am convinced 

that literature will soon react to these 

new intercultural phenomena that 

are full of very positive energy. Energy 

we have been needing so much 

and have waited for. I am very glad 

that the Anagram Publishing House I 

have the pleasure to collaborate with 

is actively taking part in popularising 

the literary embrace of all these phenomena. 

May this cruel war end as 

soon as possible. We can handle the 

rest. [RK]

KATARZYNA ZYGADLEWICZ 


81

Destroyed things. 

Burnt things. 

Remembered things. 

RC 


BLACK RUSSIA 

N i c k A l l d r i d g e 

POEMS 

Russia bleeds her black oil blood 

Running through her pipelines 

Laden on her tankers 

In the bellies of her tanks. 

She breaths in her own gas 

As though it was air on fire 

With her glorious pride 

And all that comes after: 

Pride in conquest leads to defeat, 

Pride in victory leads to despair, 

Pride in greed leads to suffering, 

And the pride of a bully leads to his fall. 

VLAD 

Two motes of darkness meet your gaze. 

A man who lives and breathes control 

unafraid of power plays and desperate measures can still, 

and always will, manifest his own downfall 

but not before he rips the world apart, 

thrashing against his own inevitable fate. 

His cancer spreading 

to the edges, collapsing to the centre, 

before another’s fingertips pull down the lids 

to separate his darkness from this Earth. 

Russia is capitalism gone mad 

It is Gazprom and Rosneft 

Unfettered and unchecked. 

Corporate greed controls the state 

Uncaring, unfeeling, less human than hate. 

She lies and dissembles to any who will listen. 

Pity the humans caught in her webs 

As Mother Russia eats her children 

We look on in disbelief. 

And her neighbours suffer more 

Than words can relate. 

LOST THINGS 

Things. So many things. Only things. 

Suddenly gone things. Snatched away things. 

Destroyed things. Burnt things. Remembered things. 

Things holding memories. Things holding dreams. 

So many things. Only things. 

Home things. Homes are things. 

Lost things. Burnt things. 

A Bromley house fire. A city in Ukraine. 

Accident or negligence or a deliberate act. 

Things. So many things. Not only things. 

Fire fighters, warnings, or none of that. 

And not just things, much more than that. 

But also things. Remember that. 


83

Piotr Jakubczak 


W A R 


85

R o b i n P i l c h e r 

CELLAR 

To young minds in happier times 

a place of adventure, Aladdin’s cave: 

bare bulb casting dancing shadows 

into cobwebbed corners, 

a modest stash of wine, 

stored potatoes, onions, apples, 

all fragrancing the chilly air, 

assuring us of times of plenty, 

a continuity. 

Now, a different reassurance, 

as life crumbles above our heads: 

we wait in darkness now, 

listen for the whine and crump of shells 

as dust of ages, dislodged, sprinkles our faces 

in mockery of benedictions 

seemingly beyond our reach. 

And yet, like sown seeds, 

we will emerge from the dark and broken earth, 

vines pushing through cracked concrete, 

to thrive again. 



87

Agnieszka 


Traczyńska 


89

R a d e k R u c i ń s k i 

A Girl From Kiev 


illustration: 

AGNIESZKA LITWIN 

YOU JUST NAMED THE WAR 

ELŻBIETA ISAKIEWICZ 

Hurricanes born of Atlantic lows tear off Europe’s 

rooftops, rip trees from soil (their 

exhumed roots exposed to the light), and 

evoke lament for losses amongst the rubble. 

Beyond the Polish border, a dictator strikes a 

sovereign state. As if the plague precipitated an 

avalanche of phenomena and events delivering 

knock-out blows to the world. 

And we look on powerless and, with white-knuckled 

panic, scoop bits of earth – once our land – 

into a sack. 

My mother, a borderlandist, repeats what she 

said at the beginning of the pandemic. As long 

as the young survive. On television, she watches 

images of war sweeping through the land of her 

youth yet again, a hair’s breadth from her birthplace. 

The coronavirus has lost its crown, it no 

longer reigns supreme in the media, it has been 

pushed from the podium by the bloody assault. - 

I dreamt it - nods her head as she scratches the 

cat’s belly. - I saw a swamp with splinters of broken 

tables and chairs, rags streaked with mud. Wilted, 

tarnished flowers. A crowd was clamoring at 

a nearby hunting shop at the end of the street. 

They were Ukrainians, residents of Warsaw. 

They were buying weapons for their brothers. I 

dropped some money in the collection jar they 

had propped up. 

For the first time ever I’m paying for a rifle that 

will be aimed at someone’s chest in instinctive 

self-defense – I don’t hesitate. After all, I am a 

woman. 

This is how history arrived at my doorstep. The 

street outlet will never be the same. The word 

„later” lingers, spanning its interval. [EI] 

A fragment of the new book „Moments”, prepared 

for printing – by Elżbieta Isakiewicz. 


91

T e d S m i t h - O r r 

The Beginning 

The steel blanket casts it’s red shadow, 

Shrouding the ragged line of bodies, 

Escaping to a hopeful freedom 

Refugees in their own country. 

Some driving, until the petrol is gone 

Or engines break down, 

From the eternal waiting. 

Waiting for the road to clear. 

Others walking: walking on sole-less shoes 

Carrying only shopping bags 

Crammed with small but sacred possessions. 

Soulful hearts leading them forwards. 

Babies swaddled in soft linen 

And parents’ jackets. 

Some invent games and quizzes 

To occupy their children 

And join in the Ukrainian National anthem. 

The spirit of war cannot defeat 

Their spirit of humanity. 

The imperial rainfall of sickles hammer the ground 

Destroying deserted buildings and the red steel blanket 

Follows the hunched shoulders 

And a sea of woollen hats silhouette 

Against the ashen red sky. 


Illustration: Renata Cygan 


93


Y u r i i 

I v a n t s y k 

Ukraine 


95

A n n L o v e l a c e 

CORPORAL DIXON REMEMBERS 

Nearly half a million soldiers stranded on Dunkirk sands. 

Nothing to eat and fearing we were trapped and in enemy hands 

Stukka planes screeching over us, flames and smoke all around 

Exhausted by thirst and hunger, bombarded by the bombs’ blasting sound. 

What would be the outcome? We lay there awaiting our fate. 

Hoping for some respite and for the nightmare to abate. 

And then it came – the miracle, gradually over several days 

A diverse means of transport appeared through the smoky haze. 

Fishing smacks and pleasure craft, boas of every kind, 

All braving the dangerous journey with one plan only in mind. 

To transport we thousands of soldiers back to the British shore 

Ferrying their passengers to safety, before going back for more. 

Passengers like me, Douglas Dixon a corporal in the Medical Corps. 

Who like thousands of others thought nothing was solved by war. 

But knowing that Hitler was determined to overrun our land 

With reluctance saw it as my duty to lend a helping hand. 

Now I am past my nineties, married for seventy years 

I still so vividly remember how my desperation turned to cheers. 

After five days of near starvation was the best sight I’d ever seen, 

The famous paddle boat of its day, the popular Medway Queen. 

One of hundreds of other craft manned by bands of men 

Who not only volunteered once, but again, again and again. 

Crossing the English Channel, leaving frightened children and wives 

In the biggest transport operation, saving half a million lives. 

My heart bleeds for the trapped in Ukraine, with its all too familiar story. 

The suffering and terror and all for no more than Putin’s glory. 

inspired by Corporal Dixon 


Photography 

JAROSŁAW KRAWCZAK 


97

passers by 

The hustle and bustle of the street. Cars pass each other, disperse; people skulk by and 

disappear into the alleys. Most don’t know each other. We don’t know where they came 

from nor where they’re going. They carry their bags, their problems. Feel some joy. 

It’s us, PEOPLE. 

Man is said to be the most 

advanced organism on 

earth and, in the hierarchy 

of terrestrial life, the apex of the evolutionary 

pyramid. When considering 

an archetypal perspective of the human 

species there are, apart from obvious 

herd tendencies, features that 

facilitate intellectual development of 

the species. Man is often brash, inquisitive, 

and stubborn. These conditions 

foster an impetus to cross 

new boundaries, both realistic and 

ambitious. From time immemorial 

man has made great efforts to discover 

the unknown, to overcome the 

insurmountable, to understand the 

incomprehensible. These bounds are 

constantly shifting. We are constantly 

making new discoveries, though 

it would seem intuitive that realms 

of knowledge yet unexplored should 

be diminishing. After all, how many 

more songs can be written from the 

same sounds? How far into space can 

we voyage? How many more tiny particles 

exist unbeknownst to us? What 

else can films surprise viewers with? 

And yet, the human imagination is 

amazing. Augmented by ever more 

advanced technology, it allows us to 

unravel many of life’s greatest mysteries; 

create new tools, devices, and 

amenities; help overcome disease – 

all of which contribute to the protraction 

and improvement of our lives. Do 

you agree? Of course you do. Any 

sane person would, so long as they 

did not delve deeper into the darker 

sides of human activity – a side also 

driven by imagination and stimulated 

through technological development, 

e.g., the development of a new, silent, 

sonic, biological or chemical or 

who knows what other weapon. 


However, temporarily focusing on the 

positive aspects of man and assuming 

pure intentions, it could be argued 

that we seek and discover in the 

name of the common good – each of 

us according to ability and interest. 

Some want to climb as high as possible, 

others to dive as deep, while 

still there are those who want to discover 

a new species of fauna or flora 

or come up with the best remedy 

for a runny nose. The only question 

is whether we can appreciate and respect 

these aspirations. 

There is a huge variety of individuals 

in our species. Purportedly we are 

family-oriented herd animals with 

interpersonal relationships, exerting 

mutual influence on each other; but 

we are still fundamentally self-determining 

individuals. If these individual 

units cannot channel a sense of 

community and shared responsibility, 

then solidarity in humanity’s struggle 

for survival is a pipedream. We will 

slowly degrade ourselves and our environment 

– indeed, we are already 

doing so. There are certain important 

aspects of life for which we should be 

accountable – regardless of national, 

social, or political affiliation. Unfortunately, 

awareness of such concepts 

is quite low. We live according to the 

principles of «after me the flood» in 

conjunction with «what good can one 

person do? Everyone can do good although 

evil is always easier… as some 

of the world’s oligarchs know only too 

well. 

Until something changes, we will 

continue poisoning ourselves with 

our food, our drink, our air, burying 

ourselves in plastic, and slaughtering 

each other. No one wants to die, obviously, 

but there are those willing to 

slaughter out of sheer greed or lust 

for power. They are just waiting for an 

opportunity”. 

I wrote this observation a few years 

ago. Has anything changed? It 

seemed that experience, knowledge, 

as well as rapidly improving methods 

of communication would come together 

and enable everyone to fully 

appreciate, for example, peaceful 

living. How does this line up with reality? 

One isolated man cannot inflict 

evil on a global scale, no matter his 

determination; however, such men 

usually attract whole networks of cohorts. 

We don’t like to be lectured; and in 

truth, this is no appeal for self-betterment. 

I am not playing missionary. 

I merely observe events and form 

conclusions. Everyone instinctively 

resists the notion that – under the 

right circumstances – people can still 

be barbarians, do they not? I am not 

a scientist, sociologist, nor philosopher. 

I am simply an ordinary PAS- 

SERBY through life, just like we all are, 

and I am merely imparting my own 

reflections and ruminations. Having 

said that... I do not believe that our 

species is integrated and I suspect 

most people believe similarly – they 

just aren’t vocal. The world is governed 

by money, while money itself is 

governed by a small group of de-facto 

executives. We are suffering from an 

incurable disease that we are power-

less to fight. This disease manifests 

itself as commercialism and the drive 

to dominate. We ostensibly decry 

snobbery and consumerism, but the 

slightest hint of a black-something 

sale the shoppers’ flock. 

Regardless of whether we need it 

or not, the occasional odd purchase 

seems harmless. Thus, we surround 

ourselves with heaps of unnecessary 

junk. Evolution – slowly, imperceptibly 

– persists, and the impacts of a more 

comfortable lifestyle can already be 

noticed, if by no other sign than by 

the reduction of our dentition (fewer 

people are developing third molars, 

and the ones that do erupt are diminishing 

in size. We are unlikely to ever 

discover exactly where evolution is 

taking us – but is it headed in a positive 

direction? There is too much egotism, 

anger, ruthlessness, and greed 

(the escalation continues) and too 

little empathy, kindness, and sincere 

charity in people. I do not believe that 

this will change because this is how 

we have been for ages, and while our 

world shrinks the problem grows. So, 

from time to time, wars break out. 

They show just what cruelty we are 

capable of levying against each other. 

The question is whether sudden 

surges of solidarity are able to tip the 

scales back into balance, and if so, for 

how long. 

All who are born must die. Sometimes 

willingly. Sooner or later. Independently, 

with assistance, or for 

want of assistance. The undeniable 

fact remains that we are all mortal. 

However, we can live our lives admirably 

or less so, helping or hindering 

one another. Which of us will there 

be more of? Perhaps we should come 

to our senses. 

We are just PASSERSBY. 

[JN] 

RC 


99

Krzysztof Wiśniewski 

100 


110

Ola Haydamaka 

u k r a i n e 


101

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