Babiy Yar

Now I know how 100,000 bodies look
Buried in soft ground;
or at least I know their shape,
How much land they fill.
I know that grass
Grows greener
with humans as fertiliser.
I am haunted by the curve of souls,
the twist of necks as chil­dren land on hun­dreds of other
Whim­per­ing not-yet-dead ter­ri­fied hor­ri­fied ghosts.

It would have been easier if it were packed to the brim.

The angle of the walls and the half-filled horseshoe
Makes it impossible not to cal­cu­late depths
And volume. The mind balks at such figures.
The eye stares and stares and ham­mers it home.

In two days, they shot 34,000 of you. There is a man
Walk­ing his dogs on your bodies now. I am blank.
Tor­tured stone stands now at the point
Where they pushed you into infinity
I walk slowly around the edge of the ravine,
And as I step onto the path­way up to the centre,
100,000 ghosts step with me and I am overwhelmed
gut­wrenched wracked broken punched ripped
by your terror and your dread. I shud­der sobs with every step.

I think my great-grand­father might be in here.
I think my great-grand­father might be sleep­ing here.

My mother says now: these are not your people.
Don’t you under­stand? They were as bad as the Nazis,
These Ukrain­i­ans. Stood by and did nothing.
We are exiles return­ing, seek­ing some­thing we don’t understand.
Seek­ing a people, a mean­ing, a hope.
I belong nowhere now. All my people are dead.