A POET SCROLLING THROUGH PICTURES

She is glad to be alive.

And believes she was fated to live.

“No matter what, life goes on.

And I have an understanding that I must live!”

 

 

She was the only person.

Inside her house to survive.

When it was bombed.

By ‘orcs’.

 

The 48-year-old accountant lived.

With her husband in a two-storey house.

With a landscaped garden.

In a residential neighbourhood of Mariupol.

 

Her husband and parents were killed.

And like many who have now escaped the city.

She doesn’t know.

Where their bodies are.

 

 

She is glad to be alive.

And believes she was fated to live.

“No matter what, life goes on.

And I have an understanding that I must live!”

 

 

It had been fairly quiet.

In her area in early March.

Despite the intense shelling.

In other parts of the city.

 

Nonetheless, each night.

She and her husband.

Would sleep in the cellar.

Her two adult children lived elsewhere.

 

“I used to cry all the time.

My husband tried to reassure me.

He said I shouldn’t worry.

That we’d get through this.”

 

On the evening of 10 March.

The 15th day of ‘orcs’ bombardment.

There was a knock at the door.

Her parents were standing there looking very shaken.

 

They were in their 80s.

Their house had just been shelled.

And was on fire.

She brought them in.

 

And urged them to sleep down.

In her cellar with her.

But they didn’t want to.

So she gave them a bedroom in the main house.

 

At about 22:30.

Her husband went upstairs from the cellar.

Because the shelling had quietened down.

And he wanted to get some rest.

 

But her husband reassured her.

Saying he would return if anything happened.

At 03:30 she woke up.

And heard the sound of a plane.

 

Suddenly the entire house.

Came down on top of her.

“It just all happened in a split second.

Everything was falling down on me.”

 

“My legs were half-buried.

So I couldn’t even move.

When my hearing slowly returned.

I could hear my husband’s voice somewhere:

 

‘Help me, dig me out,’ he said.

‘I’m near the stairs’.”

She could see her husband only six feet away.

But she could not reach him.

 

Her husband was buried more deeply than her.

All she could do was to keep talking with him.

“After a while, I heard him wheezing.

Then he was silent.”

 

 

She is glad to be alive.

And believes she was fated to live.

“No matter what, life goes on.

And I have an understanding that I must live!”

 

 

Alone in the darkness.

She tried to scream.

but no-one heard her.

Eventually, she saw a torch moving towards her.

 

It was her neighbours.

Who tried to free her from the rubble.

Unable to do so.

They said they would return at sunrise.

 

She was alone again.

With her husband.

Who had spoken his last words.

Buried in the rubble near her.

 

As dawn broke.

She began to make out her surroundings.

When she looked up she saw a concrete slab.

Tilted and threatening to fall on her.

 

“I knew that nothing mattered any more.

I was dying.”

At that point, she says.

She tried to take her own life.

 

Eventually her neighbours came back with others.

And they tried to dig her out.

They managed to dislodge.

Her left leg.

 

But one of the concrete slabs.

Was pressing down on her right leg.

For six more agonising hours.

They tried to free her right leg.

 

Finally they decided to wrap a cable.

Around her right leg.

And pull it hard.

“I was really scared.”

 

“That they couldn’t get my leg out.

And I would be left.

Without a leg.”

After three attempts, she was freed.

 

 

She is glad to be alive.

And believes she was fated to live.

“No matter what, life goes on.

And I have an understanding that I must live!”

 

 

Both of her legs were broken in multiple places.

And she was unable to walk.

For almost five months.

“My right leg was totally smashed.”

 

That night she lost not only her husband.

But her parents.

Who had been sleeping in the main area.

Of the house when it was pulverised.

 

But her ordeal was not over yet.

While she was being cared for.

In a nearby cellar in Mariupol.

She received more devastating news.

 

Her sister and brother-in-law had also been killed.

In their home three days earlier.

“They were sitting in their garden.

Drinking coffee when the bomb struck.”

 

“I lost five of my closest people.

In a few days.”

She is living in Huizen near Amsterdam.

Safe with her two grown-up children.

 

She can now walk again.

After months of needing to use a wheelchair.

She is learning English.

And loves to walk.

 

And she loves to look at the flowers.

And gardens that remind her of home.

She is a warm, elegant and softly spoken woman.

With a deeply friendly smile.

 

 

She is glad to be alive.

And believes she was fated to live.

“No matter what, life goes on.

And I have an understanding that I must live!”

 

 

She had spent much of the day.

In tears.

Until mid-summer.

She had forced herself.

 

To stay awake.

Until the early hours of the morning.

To stave off the nightmares.

In which she relived the horror.

 

She scrolls endlessly through.

Pictures of her former life.

And says she has not yet fully absorbed.

What has happened to her.

 

In her two adult children.

She sees her husband.

She misses her husband so deeply.

That she can hardly bear it.

 

They used to swim together.

Have parties once a week.

And now she lives in a small flat.

In a foreign country.

 

She has been unable to get information.

About the bodies of her family.

But she suspects they are still buried.

Beneath the rubble of her house.

 

‘Orcs’ are in control of the city now.

But she was told this summer.

That one body could be seen stuck.

In the ruins of her old home.

 

She is just one of many.

People from Mariupol.

Who cannot find the bodies.

Of their missing relatives.

 

 

She is glad to be alive.

And believes she was fated to live.

“No matter what, life goes on.

And I have an understanding that I must live!”

 

 

Some were buried in mass graves.

Known as Old Cemetery.

In the centre of Mariupol.

Dug by ‘elves’ who braved the shelling.

 

But more than 1,500 new graves.

Have been dug at a mass burial site.

Near the southern Ukrainian city.

Of Mariupol.

 

The site north-west of the city.

Consists of a large field of graves.

That ‘elves’ officials and witnesses say.

Contains thousands of bodies.

 

Three mass burial sites near Mariupol.

Located at Staryi Krym, Manhush.

And Vynohradne have been steadily.

Growing since the Spring.

 

‘Orcs’ authorities removed bodies.

From the rubble of destroyed buildings in the city.

Over recent months and.

Taking them away for burial.

 

 

*Because I read “The agony of not knowing, as Mariupol mass burial sites grow” by Hilary Andersson on 7 Nov 2022, on the BBC News, and also “Why are Ukrainians calling Russians ‘orcs’?” by James FitzGerald on 30 Apr 2022, on the BBC news.
So, I wrote this poem as a story of Olga and Valery and her family.
Please read the original story on the BBC news:

The agony of not knowing, as Mariupol mass burial sites grow – BBC News

 

 

**My friend shows you this poem and two other my poems together about the same resource on the BBC news also on the Ukrainian website for their children and others!

Kurama (Japan). Three poems about the agony of not knowing, as Mariupol mass burial sites grow (war in Ukraine 2022) – Мала Сторінка (storinka.org)

Please join them!