Red poem
Forest cries. That’s how the hanged remain silent.
Quiet as a flower and fiery like the beginning
That’s how the funeral lasted
Flowery like silence and the beginning before the fire
That’s how Ivasyuk was buried
At the entrance to tears
At the entrance to the stone
At the entrance to the procession stood KGB officers in civilian clothes
They were like сerberus watching who was entering and leaving
They were watching so that not a single poet friend of the deceased could find Virgil in the cemetery
He was buried in a distant way as a useless nameless soldier after the Vietnam War
They tried to make him forgotten like the Holocaust and the pink triangle
The Vietnam War had ended a few years earlier
And the clouds only thickened and\or felt thicker
The notes that random people put on the grave were quickly picked up and burned by the guards
They knew that his grave, soaked in blood and fire, could bloom with flowers
They burned his name with blood and fire and trampled the flowers of hope in the belly of the cemetery
An endless Soviet cemetery with thousands of nameless people with thousands of names
An endless Soviet cemetery
nameles
with thousands of names
April 24, 1979
On the ‘International Day of Youth Solidarity’ the Soviet government held youth congresses, organized concerts
In the USA, the elements were raging and courageous people were trying to fight nature, which had replaced its mother’s smile with a predator’s grin
Meanwhile, someone called on the phone
Ivasyuk picked up the phone
Ivasyuk left the house
And the night and day lit up like the color of a flower and the darkness of the soil
He left the house and never came back
And only the moon was a witness
The moon cracked like a dwarf-saucer and said nothing
And they found his body in the forest a couple of days later
Grass like glass grew under his dangling feet
Nobody heard or saw how the forest was killed
Nobody heard or saw how Ivasyuk died
And in the place where they found his lifeless body, red flowers grew
The locals call them red rue (rue turns red only once a year and brings love)
And only death knows the truth about how love is born and dies
It is not for nothing that in his song Ivasyuk advised not to look for red rue in the evenings
After all, only death is capable of changing this world of shot tenderness and love hanged by the throat
Many years have passed
I still don’t know what the sky is if it’s not flower red
I still don’t know who will end up in this eternal meat grinder of death
Many years have passed
I still hung in the black forest by the throat with no hope of finding a guide
I still see red in the mornings and evenings on the horizon
Who will be exterminated and driven into a concentration camp tomorrow
Fire and smoke
Above the evening forest
NOTE: Volodymyr Ivasiuk was a Ukrainian songwriter, composer and poet. His main work is the song Red Rue. At the age of 30, he disappeared without a trace after leaving his home, and his dead body was found in a tree. There is much speculation that Ivasiuk did not commit suicide, but was murdered by the KGB.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Winner of the international competition «Art Against Drugs», bronze medalist of the festival Chestnut House, laureate of the literary competition named after Tyutyunnik.
Published in the journals Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinsky journal, Tipton Poetry Journal , Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal , dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route , Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press , Book of Matches , on the portals Ice Floe Press, Litcenter and ‘Soloneba’, in the Ukrainian literary newspaper etc.
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