Robbed of the voice, and the word, and all chances to make text or speech, work has stopped to make sense, conversations are meaningless, and at every turn all that was boundless is cut down by a fence. Robbed of personal pronouns, for there cannot be “we” any more, much less “I,” hardly probable are “he” or “she”—for there are now Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Mariupol, for now there is a war. War nightmares since childhood, but then, never combat operation, it used to be only the home front or the occupation, and ex-I was just a nobody in-between of everything else. Later, happened A Song of Stone by Iain Banks, and then nothing for many years, and to end up now in this unstoppable dream again; wish it’d be possible to wake up and understand that it’s real but no. Because the reality’s such that it is unclear how one should face it, it is not for those who are sane, for the side ex-I is on now fires missiles into Ukraine.
It’s impossible to keep silent, there’s no way to keep silent when this happens, one should open one’s mouth and finally make at least some frigging sound. It’s impossible to say a single word as the right for a word, any word, belongs now to those who hide in cellars where everything burns, shells explode, and someone’s mother is in the grave dug on a playground. It is also impossible to articulate all those words, “shells,” “surrounded,” “explosions,” “refugees,” “death,” “dead,” “corpses,” “losses,” and how was it..? oh yeah, “incoming mail.” It’s impossible to do anything or think straight, yet one should; every day begins with an attempt to persuade yourself that it’s no time to become hysterical now, to no avail. It’s impossible to be the one who’s alive where they shoot from and, at the same time, the one who tries to offer support and consoles those who suffer this terrible loss. One grown-up woman, now adrift in Gyumri, feeds stray dogs, also adrift; someone else and their hedgehog still have the Georgian border to cross. One grown-up man stares at the tabletop in dumb amazement, saying, “Every morning I wake up at three and expect a nuclear strike.” Love in the time of plague and war may be figured but it’s improbable and disfigured here, where there are many of those who may find themselves behind bars or under arms to the glory of this brain-damaged Reich. Dear God, would it be possible, please, to cancel these recent weeks that had canceled all life and hope for good and beyond any doubt?
So sorry, so awfully sorry. Everyone who was and remains here are fucking nuts—in lots of different ways, irrevocably, out-and-out.
Translated by Max Nemtsov