In a new poem, the novelist and poet Ben Okri writes about what hope can grow out of the destruction in Ukraine
All around you missiles
Are falling. Churches
You once knew won’t
Be there any more.
The streets you walked
Will be changed by
Blood and shelling
And bombs. It seems
The world’s gone mad.
As the Earth shakes,
Not because of the rage
Of the gods, but that
One man wants to
Win back a lost empire,
You will think that
Your world is being
Shattered for ever. It is.
But out of the destruction,
Out of all this thunder,
Something new will
Come. Whatever happens
Your land will know
The courage of its soul,
Its people; and history
Will be rewritten not
With the force of an autocrat
But by the steadfast hope
And desire to be true
To the beauty of your earth
And all you have
Suffered. Katya in your
Bomb shelter, we’re with you.
We’re there in the shadows
We’re there in the silence
Between the explosions …
*
Ben Okri is a novelist and poet. He is the author of Every Leaf a Hallelujah and The Famished Road
Voices of Ukraine: writers including Ian McEwan and Karl Ove Knausgaard will read work by Ukrainian authors at a Guardian Live event in London 0n Monday 11 April. The event will also be livestreamed and all profits will be donated to the DEC Ukraine appeal. Book here
