Lesya Ukrainka: Ukranian Poet
…will words ever win wars?
While working on the memoir of a 95-year-old client, I had the good fortune to meet a friend of his, a man who happens to be a blood relative of Larysa Petrivna Kosach, a Ukranian poet whose brilliant creations of words failed to stem political turmoil, strife, and war in her homeland.
When Lesya’s beloved aunt, Aleksandra Kossach, was arrested by Czarist police, Leysa wrote a poem titled, “Hope.” Here is a portion of that poem:
No more can I call liberty my own,
To me there’s naught remains but hope alone…
Thanks to Poetry Sans Frontiers, sponsored by China Global Television Network, here is a reading by Katerina Mikehyceva, deputy director of the Odessa museum of Western and Eastern Art in Ukraine. This is one of Lesya’s poems titled, “The Answer.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej_xFlqGzx4
Words will never win wars…wars cannot be won.
And it is poetry — art that is meant to unite humanity — that provides such an answer.
