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# The Rooftops of Kyiv
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/the-rooftops-of-kyiv/
- Published: 2025-12-21T19:17:05.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-26T16:16:57.000Z
- Description: On the rooftops of Kyiv we master the circle dance, the feel of wood that can still support our weight.
- Author: Andy
- Tags: Be The Change, poetry

On the rooftops of Kyiv we master  
the circle dance, the feel of wood  
that can still support our weight.

We sing *Hava Nagila* and *Oh, Marichka*,  
especially when the power is out and  
winter tugs at our sleeves, begging

for bread. With battered telescopes  
we learn to tell Jupiter apart from Orion,  
an Iskander-M from a Shaheed drone.

Elsewhere, people lounge on couches  
or pace on plush carpets, fretting about  
nose hairs, Christmas gifts, cracked plaster.

If you ask at the right moment—between  
bomb blasts, say—we might confess  
to feeling more alive than ever, all of us

neighbors now, life stripped to its essence  
of survival, death, and poetry. But Andriy  
is on the front in Donetsk, Ivan is recovering

from shrapnel wounds, Aunt Polina died  
in a missile strike on Odesa, and little Misha  
has seen too much. So nightly we take up

our samovars and cots, our tourniquets  
and banduras; nearby, collared dove chicks  
make their first comical attempts at flight.