Journey through Ladoga

— based on the testimony of Maryna from Kyiv

Clutching the steering wheel, my didus
warmed his hands in rags that he had set on fire
as he drove through ice sheets and landmines
to deliver parcels of food to the Leningrad Blockade.

My didus Naumenko Grigory Evdokymovich
lived in Kyiv. He’d never seen Leningrad’s ballets,
nor the elegant symmetry of its bridges,
the arches gracing the mirror of the Neva.

But he’d heard of corpses lying in the street,
of people delirious after eating sawdust, carpenter’s glue,
library paste, window putty, and plaster.
For my didus who survived Holodomor,
famine was a childhood companion.

In 1943 at nineteen my didus drove through blizzards,
crossed Lake Ladoga, the “Road of Life” for the starving.
In the ancient Valaam monastery by the Lake,
the monks would pray for the hungry,
their voices drowned by the winter wind.

A black star would land on the ice, then blossom
into a thousand cracks. The next car over
would disappear under enemy fire.

My didus didn’t live to be a hundred this year.
He didn’t see Russians kidnapping Ukrainian children,
selling the country’s grain
to summon hunger in his land and abroad
like a sorcerer summoning spirits
with the flick of a hand.

Eighty years ago,
he drove forth into the darkness.
The food he carried warmed his path.
The smoldering flame
reminded him where to seek the light.

Grigory Evdokymovich, it is there —
the flame of your life —
smoldering still.

* Didus is Grandfather in Ukranian