Nowarnowarnowarnowarnowarnowar . . . and so on, 1,500 characters of it. I can't talk about the war in prose, at all. In verse, every day. Not recognizing my own voice. It was the same in the maternity ward, between contractions; who was shouting just then? I must be losing my voice. Lyric soprano, singing mezzo. Switching to bellowing and growling. After the peremoga (Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!) it will be difficult to return to the flageolets and pianissimo in upper notes. Maybe details were our ruin. We were tolerant, we tried to understand and justify everyone. With absolute evil, that doesn't work. We . . . I never knew that word before. Who are we? My own kind, my fellow countrymen, scattered all over the world; they’ve lost everything, but it’s not what they are crying about. We rock empty baby carriages; we cradle murdered children. We write on those blank A4 sheets of paper with which the girls in Rostov, Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Moscow went to solo pickets. Meanwhile, in a dark basement in Mariupol, a young woman writes her last name in permanent marker on her arms and legs, so that she can be identified, if a tank from Russia comes crawling in and doesn’t miss.
March 21, 2022 Translated by Sasha Moroz