Ukrainian Vignettes
22 young years ago, I lived in Kyiv. Here are a few snapshots from my memories.
Living in exile sharpens the memory. I spent a year living in Kyiv and learning about its history and culture. I spoke Czech so could understand a good amount of Ukrainian - it’s closer to Czech than Russian. I taught a little English, did some investigative journalism, wrote my poetry and soaked it all in. A beautiful city.
I’ll avoid pontificating. Here, just a few memories of my days in the city and traveling through the country.
Protest. Every morning getting up and bringing coffee and bread to the protest camp along Krischatchek, the main boulevard. Ukraine Without (the murderer) Kuchma. You had to get up early to get bread, such great bread! The pensioners lived on the stuff, so little money they had. I fought and marched and LIVED. We battled with baby-faced riot police, mostly just up my street at the government administration building on Bankova St.
Liukeranskaya St. I lived in a beautiful apartment just steps off of Krischatchek, a historical building. Evenings, I’d look out over the city of hills, the leafy streets, the world beyond and just stood amazed that I was here, alive at all.
Driving along the great river Dnipr, mid-winter, cold as any day in Northern Canada. Looking out the window and seeing, the left bank, huge apartment buildings where most lived and the whole river filled with people. I remarked, “So nice Ukrainians love the sport of ice fishing. Reminds me of Canada.” To which my Ukrainian friend replied, “Nyet. That’s not sport. They are surviving”
Mornings running through the cool streets, shopping at the nearby beautiful Bessarabska market, geiger counter in hand - you had to check for radiation in the food at the time, post Chernobyl.
Afternoons at the British Council reading voraciously, the only one almost ever in their well-stocked English library. Evenings outside the police station near Universytet station writing down police license plates as they picked up hookers, their side business. I was later removed from the country for this.
Later evenings at Buddy Guy, a block away. Dark, basement blues bar where all the ex-pats and eccentrics hung out. Later evenings walking home and being asked for my ID and paying the cops a few hryvnia bribe to keep them in food for that night’s shift. Some weekends, heading to the crazy Caribbean Klub or Klub Dynamo to talk in French with the all-black staff from Ivory Coast, indentured slaves really.
A Ukrainian wedding, reception at the Korean embassy. Endless chants of “Pusa! Pusa! Pusa! - Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” after which everyone had to down whatever was in their hand. Waking up and stepping over all the passed-out bodies at 4 in the morning.
Babi Yar. On my runs always stopping for a moment and like so many places in Kyiv, pondering all the suffering that was evident in its monuments and in the faces of its people. Elderly babushkas, grandmothers going through garbage bins. 10 am, drunk 12-year-olds at the kiosk near the park. Flowers, so many flowers everywhere!
Bowling with students. Meeting Kyiv Post friends and trying to get my shit published. Finding a small jar of peanut butter in an empty shop. Only vodka, chocolate, crackers and that expensive jar available.
Going to the internet cafe to send some “hotmails” back home. Wading to my computer through 100s of young men playing shooter games. A future foretold.
Weekends on Trukhaniv island, picnicking, swimming, taking in the crowds of young, hopeful Ukrainians. Weekend trips out of town. The rolling hills and endless fields. The country seemed so immense, so empty in a way, so beautiful. It remains so.
Stolen Elegy
Oh the end game of i
to have bounced from country to country
or danced among the silent letters of time,
to have been part of Marseille, of Seoul, of Carlsbad
of Canada and the Alps,
to have returned at the time of tin terror
to this earthy, giving land
to Antigua, to Guatemala and to those places
where the Mayans met the Spanish and they mixed their blood,
to have sauntered through the mist and mystery of early morning Prague
to have survived this house of mirrors, this life
to have sought in vain, the always in the eyes of one woman
to have questioned old wisdom, new wisdom, this empty modern,
to have seen things as they are
death, the clear morning, the forever sky and the tender blooms of spring
and to have seen the horror, the always deep end
except for that one moment of clarity,
the old lady in Kyiv handing me a pen
a face that does not want you to forget it.
Oh the end game of i
perhaps no more, no less that u.