I have seen the sun

Spilling its copper petals on the Black Sea

By the base of the prisoners’ cliff

Where, from the acts of martyrs,

Tall poems grow up like buildings.

Deep in the wall of the wounded mountain

(Where seas no longer frown)

The songs of the martyrs come up like cities or buildings.

Their chains shine with hymns

And their hands cut down the giant blocks of stone.

Poetry, psalms

Flower with a huge architecture

Raising their grandeur on the gashed cape.

Words of God blaze like a disaster

In the windows of their prophetic cathedral.

But the sighs of the deep multitude

Grow out of the mountain’s heart as clean as vines.

O martyrs! O tremendous prisoners!

Burying your murder in this marble hill!

The Lamb shall soon stand

White as a shout against the sky:

His feet shall soon strike rainbows from the rock.

The cliffs give up their buried streams.

Throw down the chains of your wrists, prisoners!

Drink, and swim!

The winds have carried your last sentences

Across Ukraine.

Your poetry shall grow in distant places.

Asia, Greece, Egypt, England know your name.

Your hymns shall stand like vineyards

And swing with fruit in other worlds, in other centuries.

And your ecstasy shall make shade,

Foliage for summers unforeseen

To cover travellers in continents you have not known

When the temples have fallen,

The theaters cemented in your blood have long ago fallen.

Your joy echoes across the carved ridge

Plays across mountains

Stands like fleets or islands

Sailing the seas to Greece

And after twenty times one hundred

Years of repercussion

Your waters shatter the land at my feet with seas forever young.