Remembering Victoria Amelina, killed in a Russian airstrike in Ukraine.

I heard Scott Simon this weekend with an opinion piece…

The tragedy itself grabbed me,

Her perspective being a writer that had turned to poetry rang true,

And as we honor her memory,

This is from her poem “About A Crow,” translated by Uilleam Blacker:

In a barren springtime field

Stands a woman dressed in black

Crying her sisters’ names

Like a bird in the empty sky

She’ll cry them all out of herself.

The one that flew away too soon

The one that had begged to die

The one that couldn’t stop death

The one that has not stopped waiting

The one that has not stopped believing

The one that still grieves in silence

She’ll cry them all into the ground

As though sowing the field with pain

And from pain and the names of women

Her new sisters will grow from the earth

And again will sing joyfully of life

But what about her, the crow?

She will stay in this field forever

Because only this cry of hers

Holds all those swallows in the air

Do you hear how she calls,

Each one by her name?

From “About A Crow.”

The name of the writer is Victoria Amelina. She died after a Russian missile strike in Ukraine. She was 37 years old.