Art & War, Siblings (3.18.22)

The Ukranian Poet

Art sat at a table in the kitchen in Lviv, shelling 

peas under the swinging bulb that could do no other 

than to cast light in all directions, into every corner 

of the room and even beneath the wooden surface 

of the table scarred and pitted from all the pots

and pans, plates and paring knives that for a lifetime 

had made their kind of music, a family music

composed of tears and uncontrollable laughter.  

Art softly sang a song it had learned as a child 

from a grandmother or a grandfather or an aunt 

or an uncle, about home and country, sang it 

to no one in particular, just as art's grandmother 

or grandfather or aunt or uncle had sung the song 

solitarily softly and to no one in particular.

Art had always done this--shell peas 

at the kitchen table while singing the song--

for as long as it could remember.

War got up from a chair in the living room 

and hurled a glass into the fireplace, upset a table lamp, 

tore a curtain from the window, threw a book 

across the room, pulled over a chest of drawers, 

not understanding why it did so, only that doing so 

felt liberating and righteous, no doubt because 

the order of a living room, its furniture and its keepsakes, 

was an outrage, an affront, a wrong, a hypocrisy, 

a treachery, a lie, an insubordination, a challenge, 

an insult, and a mockery and must never be tolerated.  

War, too, sang as it went about its business 

wrecking the room, sang to nobody in particular

and with gusto and with joy, and the song it sang it, 

too, had learned from the grandmother or grandfather 

or aunt or uncle who also had sung with gusto

while tearing the living room apart, dashing

every family photo to the floor, flattening 

keepsakes and heirlooms with the family bible.

Art listened a moment to the hubbub emanating 

from the next room, bending forward over the table 

of shelled peas to peer into where war intoned 

and wrecked, wrecked and intoned (to the sounds of glass 

shattering and drapery ripping and chair legs snapping), 

then continued shelling peas and singing the song 

it had learned from the grandmother or grandfather 

or aunt or uncle when so young and once upon a time.  

Art said, Brother, why so busy and so intent?  

Can you not sit for a moment and be still?  

War heard nothing.  War saw nothing.  

War broke glass, tore drapery, war snapped 

the legs of living room tables and chairs.  

War said, Sister, will you never finish with those peas?  

You have only me to feed, and I am hungry.