Good morning and happy weekend,
Beginning tomorrow and continuing each Monday through April and May is a survey of the most evocative books of the past eight decades. Look out on Monday for the Books of the 1940s. In the meantime, this week’s music and poetry are in honor of Ukraine:
MUSIC
The “cold open” of Saturday Night Live last month:
Here’s PBS News Hour on the spread of support for Ukraine in music and the arts: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/ukraines-blue-and-yellow-colors-everywhere-as-the-world-demonstrates-solidarity
Apparently, some in the Ukrainian opposition have taken on Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as an unofficial anthem. Dee Snyder, the front man for the group, fully endorses this. But he doesn’t always condone the use of the song as an anthem for stupidity. When asked why not allowing its use for the anti-vaxxer crowd, he tweeted this:
“People are asking me why I endorsed the use of "We're Not Gonna Take It" for the Ukrainian people and did not for the anti-maskers. Well, one use is for a righteous battle against oppression; the other is…infantile feet stomping against an inconvenience.” Here’s the song with the Ukrainian flag as backdrop:
POETRY
I decided to spend a while looking up Ukrainian poetry. I was struck with the sadness memorialized by Ukrainian poets. Caught between the Communists of the U.S.S.R. and Nazi Germany, the history of Ukraine is. Sad that a country often described as the “breadbasket of Europe” is the site of so much grief.
…we stopped digging deep long ago
in this uncertain field of ours-yours
because all kinds of junk can turn up:
human bones, horses’ heads, unexploded mines
--Halyna Kruk
…someone stands between you and death — but
who knows how much more my heart can stand —
where you are, it’s so important
someone prays for you
even with their own words
even if they don’t clasp their hands and kneel
plucking the stems off strawberries from the garden
I recall how I scolded you when you were small
for squashing the berries before they ripened
my heart whispers: Death, he hasn’t ripened yet
he’s still green, nothing in his life has been
sweeter than unwashed strawberries
I beg you: oh God, don’t place him at the front,
please don’t rain rockets down on him, oh God,
I don’t even know what a rocket looks like,
my son, I can’t picture the war even to myself
--Halyna Kruk, translated from the Ukrainian by Sibelan Forrester
…A country in the shape of a puddle, on the map.
Any country is an easy target in March,
in June, July, August, September, October,
as long as it rains
and maps litter the street.
Stop, who goes there, General Oaken Knees.
The Red Square of his naked chest shines the way.
And behind him, a half-shadow, half-man,
half-orphan, half-exile, whose mouth is as coarse
as his land —
double-land where every cave is at war.
Do you say there won’t be a war? I say nothing.
A small gray person cancels
this twenty-first century,
adjusts his country’s clocks
for the winter war.
—Lyudmyla Khersonka, translated from the Russian by Valzhyna Mort
Have a happy weekend,
Glenn
From the archives:
Powerful poetry