I war writing
Stikhos has no time to waste
it goes fast past saying:
rise, move, step – sharpened
keen for more of this vast forest
II small cogs
Little shelter
Solid hide
Hard keep
Silent device
III tightly wound
I can’t forget
I don’t know it
Hold time in me
I’ll go on being kind
Notes on this poem
In writing this poem I was responding to Iryna Shuvalova’s introduction to her work in MPT, particularly her comments about effective war writing ‘chronicling … the minute details of war’ while ‘writing of the universal mythology of war’: that it should be ‘the particular and the universal tightly wound together’.