Today we are digging the earth again
This hateful Donetsk earth
This stale, petrified earth
We press ourselves into it
We hide in it
Still alive
We hide behind it
Sit silently in it
Like little children behind their mother’s back
We hear its heart beating
Its weary breath
We are warm and comfortable
Still alive
Tomorrow we will die
Maybe some of us
Maybe all of us
Don’t take us from the earth
Don’t tear us away from our mother
Don’t gather our remains from the field
Don’t try to put us back together again
And — we beg you — don’t erect crosses
Monuments or memorial slabs
We don’t need them
Because it isn’t for us —
You erect these monuments for yourselves.
Don’t engrave our names,
Simply remember:
On this field
In this earth
Ukrainian soldiers lie
And — that is all.
We don’t need funerals
We know where our place is
Simply cover us with earth
And move on
It would be nice if there was a field
Where rye is swaying
A lark flies overhead
And — the sky
The endless sky —
Can you imagine the grain a field
Where warriors are lying will yield?
To remember us, eat the grain from the field
Where we laid down our lives
It would be good if there were meadows there
And many flowers
And a bee under each flower
And lovers who come in the evening
To weave wreaths
To make love till dawn
And during the day, let new parents
Bring their young children
Don’t keep children from coming to us
But this will be tomorrow
Today we are still digging the earth
This cherished Ukrainian earth
This sweet, gentle earth
And with a soldier’s spade we write as one
On its body
The last Ukrainian poem of the last poets
Left alive
- Boris Humenyuk, currently MIA
Click to text excerpt below to link to Luke Harding's full Dec 2023 story in The Guardian:
