Portside

Prayer

By Lyuba Yakimchuk

Our Father, who art in heaven

of the full moon

and the hollow sun

shield from death my parents

whose house stands in the line of fire

and who won’t abandon it

like a tomb

shield my husband

on the other side of war

as if on the other side of a river

pointing his gun at a breast

he used to kiss

I carry on me this bulletproof vest

and cannot take it off

it clings to me like a skin

I carry inside me his child

and cannot force it out

for he owns my body through it

I carry within me a Motherland

and cannot puke it out

for it circulates like blood

through my heart

Our daily bread give to the hungry

and let them stop devouring one another

our light give to the deceived

and let them gain clarity

and forgive us our destroyed cities

even though we do not forgive for them our enemies

and lead us not into temptation

to go down with this rotting world

but deliver us from an evil

to get rid of the burden of a Motherland —

heavy and hardly useful

shield from me

my husband, my parents

my child and my Motherland

Lyuba Yakimchuk was born and raised in a small coal-mining town in Ukraine’s industrial east, Sje lost her family home in 2014, when the region was occupied by Russian-backed militants and her parents and sister were forced to flee as refugees. Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky are translators, poets, and scholars, editors of Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine.

From Apricots of Donbas by Lyuba Yakimchuk translated by Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky, and Svetlana Lavochkina (Lost Horse Press [Liberty Lake, WA] 2021)