War Poems

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th February 2022, author and poet Alexander Korotko began to set down as poetry the turbulent responses at the emotional, philosophical and simply human levels evoked by the resulting war. Thus, we read in the 88 poems in this volume – completed in just less than 100 days – of the seemingly endless wail of sirens; of sheltering in cellars and tunnels; of the celebrated Ukrainian steppe, churned by tanks; the dead – “our killed, have become our Saviour Angels”; and whole poems devoted to Irpin and Mariupol as the atrocities there and elsewhere became known. Korotko is not without compassion for the Russian soldier – “Russian soldier, what did you forget in my land? We had grief enough without you.” – and the soldier’s mother when she receives his dead body as “cargo 200”. Neither does he conceal his frustration with Ukraine’s allies – “we pay the West for help with blood, but the West makes no haste to deliver.”