Ukrainian Poets

This is from a book called Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine. Of course, the poems here come from the 2014 war, not the current one. How sad for this poor, tattered country.

When a country of — overall — nice people
turns — slowly — fascist
nice people don’t notice this transformation all at once

As when a person we know intimately
goes, next to us, through
an imperceptible process of aging. Imperceptibly, new wrinkles
slice the skin, frightening, deep.

Nice people nod when they run into each other,
and try, more and more, to lower their eyes,

until finally, raising them becomes an inhuman gesture.

Lyudmyla Khersonska
translated by Valznya Mort

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