The Cottage - Taras Shevchenko

Perhaps my mother prayerless trod
Nor knelt on my behalf to God,
But brought me up to what I am
As naturally as a lamb,

Why do you look like them? - Victoria Amelina

Why do you look like them?
Maybe you are brothers?

Lot's wife - Iryna Tsilyk

“There’s nothing in this country,” Lot’s wife says
impetuously and with disdain. “But it’s true. What can you get here?”
The soup’s boiling, someone else’s child is sleeping (for twenty zloty an hour),
while Lot drives back cars from Holland to sell.

Lament of Iaroslavna - Pavlo Tychyna

(I)
Snow. Light flurries falling
on the Prince’s palace.
Around it day and night
walks a tiny voice crying:
      —Prince, my dearest Prince,
      are you beyond the Danube?

A sleepless night - Maksym Rylsky

It’s stifling, quiet and dark everywhere,
The darkness strangles me, an evil darkness,
The bright world is gone... Where are you, people,
Where have you disappeared? You’re gone, all gone...

Happy days will break through the pain - Fedir

Everyone says school's quite thrilling
You make the first steps on your own.
But I'm about to forget this feeling,
My best school years were stolen.

Linden tree whispers... - Pavlo Tychyna

You know how the linden tree whispers
In the springtime, at night, by the light of the moon?

On Easter Sunday - Taras Shevchenko

On Easter Sunday among the straw
Out in the sun the children played
With Easter eggs in colors braw

Willow Sunday - Anonymous

It’s not me hitting you,
It’s the willow hitting you,

Chestnuts - Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger

On the smooth, bright path
They lie, scattered and subdued.
Brown, like a soft mouth smiling
Full and round and finely shining,
I hear them like a rippling Etüde.

I Don't Feel At Home Where I Am - Regina Derieva

I don't feel at home where I am,

or where I spend time; only where,

beyond counting, there's freedom and calm,

Consciousness of a Poem - Ihor Kalynets

from the indifferent dark 

as from a rock

oozed the breasts

of the fruit of knowledge

The Wanderer - Anastasia Shevchenko

This man was not clear to me,

He sits in the toilet and smokes,

And then he'd come to me through the window.

Sometimes he was clumsy and untidy,

And sometimes he wasn't recognizable at all.

Rain - Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger

You go. And the asphalt is suddenly wet,

The green on the trees suddenly new,

And a scent as if of fresh hay

Strikes you in the face that, warm and pale,

Has long awaited the rain.

On the Massacre - Chayim Nachman Byalik

Ye heavens, pray for mercy on my head!

If God abides in you, and if a way

To Him exists, which yet I have not found,

Do you my prayers unto His ear convey!

Autumn - Pavlo Tychyna

Fungus grows on the cultures of the world.

Autumn. In the cities by four o'clock street

lights come on.

High in the Sky - Anonymous

High in the sky a star is aglow,

cast ing bright beauty here below. 

A wave of salvation comes with the dawn:

born of a virgin is the Son.

Heaven and earth sing 

‘Alleluia! Jesus is born! Gloria!’

Love in Kyiv - Natalka Bilotserkivets

More terrible is love in Kyiv than

Magnificent Venetian passions. Butterflies

Fly light and maculate into bright tapers –

Dead caterpillars’ brilliant wings aflame!

Online - Sviatoslav Vakarchuk

Night - dominoes

With the setting sun, life will start anew

Who is asleep lying in their bed?

Someone else, not you

 

Communication - Yury Zavadsky

Surprising how feelings depend on blood pressure.

Electricity in my body prevents me from staying put.

And, still, I force myself not to move.