The Sun is bursting with gunfire across Ukraine Looking at Stash’s photos from the front line
Huge yellow flowers blossom on abandoned tanks
Growing over and under the rusting trucks
Graffiti painted by the weakened survivors
The sky is scarred by rockets shrieking above
As dead soldiers lie in the mud, in the streets Sunflowers stretch their yellow petals upwards
Through rusted armored vehicles riddled with bullets
While the flowers bleed over murdered Ukrainians
They bleed in cold, dark basements
In the frigid bombed churches of Irpim
Burning candles warm their fingers
Readying to strike across the Dnipro
Orphaned children wander without light or bread
Still painting sunflowers on war carcasses
While the invader’s ghosts are scurrying away
Drowning in pools of dirty black water
There will be no peace until liberation
Otherwise those heroes died for nothing.
–Valery Oisteanu
Poetry