3 Poems by Vasyl Barka

Born on July 16, 1908 in Ukraine’s Poltava region, Vasyl Barka was a prolific poet, novelist and religious thinker. Best known for “The Yellow Prince,” a novel set against the 1932-33 Holodomor, which he survived as a young man, he has also chronicled World War II and life in exile among the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States. His magnum opus, “Witness for the Seraphim’s Sun” is a four volume narrative in verse exploring the interpenetration of spiritual and worldly struggles against the background of World War II, during which the author was wounded as a soldier for the Red Army and taken prisoner by the Germans.

Barka died in 2003 in Liberty, New York.

The Ocean

The ocean stirs muscles and moss,
shakes their stone-hold in its froth.

Ridges doze over a blanket of blue;
hundred-candled servants: cherries bloom.

The day decrees the wave’s break
into a chamomile wreath, seething
as it smashes – like a lion! before
the boiling retreats and leaves a mirror
to reflect the smile back to its source.

Freedom, sailing; day by day
your flowing strings drone
like a minstrel in the bay;
a melody of youth out of blue light,
with the thrashing waves you glide
over the water and its evil crypts.

Then a petrel invokes a lightning bolt –
and the rains to nurture nature’s crib.

Evening Candle

Dark! the dying wick disappears.

Other Topics of Interest

‘Deliberate Provocation’: Ukrainian Writer’s Grave Vandalized in Poland

Ukraine called the vandalism of Bohdan Lepkyi’s grave in Poland a “deliberate provocation” aimed at inflaming tensions between the neighbors.

But the lip is lit; a sudden
splash (into the wax) –
its sowing: the spirit wedding life,
its sowing: heaven in the eyes.
An ascetic’s peace; a bee’s spray –
the wax flashes!…
We’re blind to its shining;
we’ve recognized the bitter
bluing wick rising.
We wait – the wick in its coffined cell –
for the sky to light the icon.
Monastic wax.

Home

Sunflowers pray.

Thunder reads the Bible on a cloud…
poplar whispers: what dread
          your lament, Isaiah!

Sunflowers pray.

Hunger; mother kills her child…
poplar screams: such is
          my paradise, Isaiah!

Translated by Stash Luczkiw