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Tag Archives: Mike Harding

A Poem for Ukraine

Mike Harding, poet, shared this poem and asked us to share far and wide so here it is. Ukraine, we have you in our hearts. Slava Ukraini.

Please share this as far and as wide as you cane – anybody may use it – publish it, print it – all I ask is that you use the whole poem, for the story is true and entire as of itself. Christy Moore reads a shortened version in his latest album and does it beautifully.

Sunflowers,

Ukraine, Spring 2022

A shaky phone-cam logged it all, and so

The whole world sees a peasant woman,

Old, afraid, and finding strangers in her land,

Do what the poor will always do

For strangers: she ignores the guns and stands

Four square furious, shaking with both fear

And anger, facing the danger; such a small

Old woman with a giant rage,

Gone to a far place way beyond her fear.

She offers them a gift with angry, quivering hands,

A little babusya facing up to titans, trolls:

Young soldiers with their AKs and their bandoliers,

Their flak-jackets, their goggles and grenades,

Their wire cutters, their killing knives, their trenching spades,

Their helmets and their gibbering headsets.

She holds out to them a welcoming gift: handfuls,

Fistfuls of sunflower seeds, those little pods

Of grace and greeting. For it is the way

With peasant people everywhere on Earth

With strangers, travellers, even in this day of days;

For those who have the least will always give the most.

But the seeds come wrapped in shells of poison words –

Barbed words, and in a voice that spits she says,

“Here, keep them in your pockets boys so, when

We bury you in our good soil, sunflowers will climb

From out your graves toward the blue sky of the truth:

Here take them, they are fat and sweet and good,

Harvested last year from my own blessed fields

With these two hands in long, hard hours.

And take them with my curse so that the flowers,

When they grow tall, will be a monument to

The babies you erased with breast milk on their lips,

The old people whose stories you cut short

That yet had years to come; the families

To whom the word “home” is an empty word,

A hopeless noun, a room in which echoes of loss

Will canon off the walls for years.

These seeds

Will be a living monument to cities, towns

And villages you ground to dust. The flowers

Will stretch their golden faces to the sky

Like children watching summer clouds sail by,

Smiling through the sunlit hours.

But in the night their nodding heads will whisper

Softly to the wind,

Here lie the murderers

That came out of the East, unwelcome and unasked,

Midwives of madness, following

A flag of lies. Now wrapped in that same flag

Of lies they lie themselves in the rich earth,

Our roots are bound about their bones

They are their winding sheets, their shrouds,

Those cheated boys, and mercenaries

Who raped and killed, and in their turn were killed.

Deep down in this gold ocean, this great yellow sea

Of flowers they sleep, wait out infinity’s hours,

The pawns, the murdering tools

Of madmen and of doctrines spawned

In secret rooms and deep

Dark vaults, cursed now for all eternity.

And so the flowers will drop their seeds

Each year so those who come to see

The everlasting fields, will read

Perennial the petals’ legends carved out here.

Stronger than granite, more mighty

And more beautiful than polished marble.

These sunflowers will tell the world

How your young lives were squandered here

Wasted on our sweet, rich soil made richer by your flesh

And bones. Then your poor weeping mothers

Will come throughout the hollow years

To water with their burning salty tears

The endless fields of yellow flower heads,

That reach to the horizon, a golden sea

Under an endless, clear blue sky,

Their faces turning ever to the sun.”

Mike Harding

– from the book The Lonely Zoroastrian.

1 Comment

Posted by mybeautfulthings on March 3, 2025 in art, Postaday2025, Uncategorized

Tags: Mike Harding

Singing, Spring and Sunflowers, A Poem

16 Mar

We learned a new piece at choir yesterday and it was so joyful, I thought you might like to hear it. The music is by Mozart.

Our Spring border lifts the spirits.

Mike Harding published this poem on Facebook yesterday and I asked if I could share it here to which he replied, “Yes, of course.” So, here it is, not really feeling like a rough draft to me. I posted a story about Ukraine and sunflowers a couple of weeks ago,Click this link to read it.

“The first, very rough draft of a new poem

Sunflowers

A shaky phone-cam filmed it all and so

The whole world sees a peasant woman finding

Strangers in her land do what peasants always do

For strangers as she ignores the guns and stands

Four square and strong and offers them a gift,

Those soldiers with their guns and bandoliers,

Grenades and wire cutters, their killing knives.

Their helmets and their gibbering headsets.

She holds out to them her gift: handfuls

Fistfuls of sunflower seeds, little pods of grace

And welcome. It is the way with peasant people

Everywhere, even in this day of days,

For those who have the least will always give the most.

But the seeds came wrapped in words,

These words,

“Keep them in your pockets boys so, when we bury

You in Ukraine’s soil, sunflowers will climb from

Your graves toward the blue sky of the truth:

Here take them, they are good, I harvested them last year.

Take them so that the flowers will be a monument to

The murdered children and the families

You bombed out of their homes; the flowers

Will stretch their golden faces to the sky

And in the night the flowers will whisper

Softly to the wind, ‘Here lie the murderers

That came out of the East, unwelcome and unwanted,

Destroyers of beauty, carriers of madness,

Cursed for all eternity.’

The fields of flowers will drop their seeds

Each year so that those to come will understand

Their stories, stronger than granite,

More beautiful than marble,

These sunflowers will tell the world

How your young lives were wasted here

On our rich soil made richer by your bones

And flesh, and your own mothers will come

Throughout the empty years

To water with their salty tears

The endless fields of flower heads,

Golden, turning in the sun.”

4 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on March 16, 2022 in music, nature, Peace, Photography, poetry, Postaday2022, Uncategorized

Tags: Mike Harding, Ukraine

Resting, Waiting and A Mike Harding Poem

20 Oct

It’s been a quiet, stay-at-home, curl-up-with-a-good-book, rest-after-hectic-holiday sort of a day while Storm Brian begins to make its way across Britain, starting with us in the South West.

I saw this in Tiger in North Finchley on Wednesday and it made me laugh so I had to buy it. I do cook with Tarragon too.

Here is a brilliant poem by Mike Harding for you that came my way yesterday and which touched a chord.

One Swallow

Remember how you’d drive at night in summers past
Through fogs and mists of midges,
Blizzards of fat bugs, snowstorms of moths
All melting on the windscreen glass?
Long, hot, country miles, you’d drive
Dry eyed and squinting out into the dark, cursing,
The windscreen frosted with their last moments,
The wipers useless, washer water gone.
You’d get back home to find the hurl and heft
And spatter, the great smears of death,
The legions lost, all dashed and hurtled to their end –
Guts, brains and wings, thorax and antennae –
Pulped into a patina you’d have to soap and scour away.

But Death comes easy for them now, no battering
Oblivion at seventy miles an hour, head on,
Just the toxic rain of money slathered across
The meadows, hills and downs.
One swallow makes a summer now;
Soon she’ll be gone too with the bees,
The birdsong and the riotous great clamour
That once welcomed every dawn.
And, as we face each silent year
And see the dustbowl fells and fields,
We’ll weep for what we all have lost:
For clouds of midges, nights alive with moths,
The scimitars of swallows, martins, swifts,
The wrens and sparrows, nightingales and jays
And the chanting birds that caroled once
All across those golden, summer days.