Four Seasons Gone

(for the outpouring of poems by many who have never written poems before
in Ukraine during the war)

There can be no canticles, matins, evensong

no waiting for blue irises, cherries to come along

in their own season, with four seasons gone.

How bravely you bear witness, testify tight-lipped,

with scribbles on wings, inscribing verses

on the green scum of ponds, passing hearses

pattering your lines. And your words creep

into the cracks in syllables fractured by shells;

then steal from town squares swung tongues of bells.

Following the Stations of each patriot’s Cross,

you throw lifelines across pages to forestall loss.

The light, with no warning, has been burgled by dark.

There is no war, the Kremlin insists, trench-talk

gagged, missile smoke dismissed as lengths,

for cradles, of organic cotton, bombs

just the claps of an audience at a show. Yet –

over spat-out cherry stones, your poems will go on

daring the unsayable, with four seasons gone.