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.
