Mykhailo Drai-Khmara
1889–1939
Mykhailo Drai-Khmara (1889-1939) was a Ukrainian poet, linguist, scholar and academic and one of the many major authors who died during the Soviet state's genocide of Ukraine in the 1930's. He was also a prolific translator, who recast Dante's "Inferno" into Ukrainian along with works by many other major European authors. However his sonnet Swans (1928), which celebrated Ukraine's five leading neoclassical poets, challenged the Soviet state's attempt to destroy Ukrainian culture. This beautiful poem initiated his fight against the authorities and was the beginning of the path that led to his death in a labour camp in Kolyma in 1939. It is believed that he laid down his life to save that of another prisoner.
These Lips of Stone
These lips of stone
The tall rooftops
Gulping the curdled light
Like Tatar Boza
The bee swarm clings to a vast honeycomb
Unmoving.
Its massive sleep.
Swollen eyelids blink
Beyond the city’s periphery
Fingers drum the guttering nervously.
Boulevards
Snow veined with dirt
Antique marble
Darkening around tree stumps,
Wounds collapsing inwards
These tears that are not mine
But those of oaks fallen
My face and hands sprinkled with rain.
Why do you weep, blind ones
Let the road
Be covered with this dirty fabric
Let it displace
The pendent ice
And believe
Soon soon
The rainbow will come
Spring will chime
In the poorest dwelling,
Sunlight will festoon
Roses, though silently now
People in winter coats
Drift on sleighs through snow.Swans
On the tranquil lake where willows dream Long tamed by both summer and Autumn They splashdown, flutter and swim Their necks bend like heavily laden vines. When frosts come resonant as glass And waves whisper immersed in a white trance These swimmers shatter the frozen space Fearless, although winter threatens. Oh cluster of five unconquered singers Through snow and storm your song victorious Breaks the apathetic faithless ice. Be strong; from slavery and nothingness Be guided by the constellated Lyre To worlds of light, oceans of foaming life.