Invincible Summer |||

To Go to Lvov

Poland is a country that from time to time has emerged from the mists of history, but always in a different place.
— Len Deighton, Blitzkrieg

Lviv in Ukraine
Lviv (Lwów when it was in Poland) is a city in western Ukraine.

Volunteers serve meals to evacuees in front of the railway station in Lviv (Newscom/Alamy)
Volunteers serve meals to evacuees in front of the railway station in Lviv

From: ‘We have to do something’: Lviv gears up to help those fleeing war (openDemocracy)

Natalia, candy store manager

Natalia, candy store manager

What native Lviv residents fear most are the air raid sirens. People who have been displaced don’t feel [the fear] so strongly.

How has the flow of customers and demand changed? Since there are now so many displaced people from Kyiv and Zhytomyr, lots of parents with kids come in. They buy a lot of sweets. Probably just to keep the kids distracted from the whole situation. Now, more displaced persons than locals pop in.

So, it’s a sort of return to normal life. People keep coming to Lviv to take a break. Only now, it’s a break from the war.

Natalia, book store manager

Natalia, book store manager

How are things in comparison to before the war? We had tourists, Lviv residents. Guests from all over Ukraine, and other countries. Demand itself hasn’t changed. Now we just have fewer local customers from Lviv.

That’s just the way it is in the country now. There aren’t any particular kinds of books that are in higher or lower demand. People who have been displaced buy more children’s books to comfort their kids. They buy books for themselves, as an escape, and for their kids.

We’re collecting books for refugees outside the country – both children’s and adults’ books. Slovakia, Lithuania and Poland are the places where we’re sending books – as a way to support Ukrainian culture.

Vyacheslav Bondar fled Hostomel with his wife and bedridden mother

Vyacheslav Bondar

Simply put, I lost absolutely all my material property. But by a stroke of luck, I managed to save the most valuable thing: the lives of my loved ones. That’s what matters.

We’re now in Lviv, recovering bit by bit. My mum’s also bouncing back, and she feels so much better after the hell she went through. (This is what a ‘true Russian fascist saviour’ does to us). She went from a state of almost complete immobility and unconsciousness to a totally stable condition. I plan to send my daughters further on to somewhere safe, but I want to return and do what my country needs.

How did we escape? By the skin of our teeth.

When the Russian fascists showed up in Hostomel [a town outside of Kyiv], they went around all the bomb shelters. They took people’s phones, so we’d lose connection to the rest of the world, and then thoroughly ‘demilitarised’ our homes and vehicles. They knocked doors in and robbed 300 apartments clean in our apartment block alone (this happened in other apartment blocks, too). Overnight, they placed military equipment very close to residential buildings and positioned defensive artillery crews in playgrounds. While we hid in basements, they turned our apartments into barracks. They advised us basement dwellers to “stock up the essentials” and to keep our mouths shut (whoever argued was taken to who knows where). For some reason they were frightened whenever they saw that someone wanted to head off to the evacuation zones.

How did we evacuate? With the help of a guardian angel.

If this stranger hadn’t promised to help, and hadn’t lived up to that promise, it’s not certain we’d have remained alive. To put it extremely bluntly.

When I realised it would only get worse, I started listening to the radio constantly. That’s how I learned about a planned humanitarian corridor. They announced that the gathering point was 15 kilometres from us. They had blown up my car, and we wouldn’t get far carrying my mum (although she’s as light as a feather). I found a cart, the sort with one wheel, and carried her like that. I quickly learned that it would take a while to travel 15 kilometres down a bumpy road covered in debris, wreckage and other bits of scrap. There was no guarantee I’d make it. My wife walked alongside and cried, while other evacuees went off far ahead.

The gathering point changed location three times, and in the end, the evac buses took off from the same place we had started our travels. From one place to another, I carried my mum in my arms, carried her in an ice-cream fridge, pulled her along on a tire, and dragged her atop a shutter. Just when I had lost heart is when our guardian angel appeared, literally out of nowhere, and helped us. Near the end he got his hands on a grocery cart and I comfortably got Mum to the gathering point in no time. The buses were bursting with people, since only seven buses out of 30 made it to Hostomel. A lot of people that had embarked on this hellish quest to get to the evacuation point simply didn’t fit on the buses. But they let us on with my bedridden mum. A few guys who had managed to be among the first to sit down gave up their places to the women.

That’s how we set off, accompanied by the desperate gazes of the ones we couldn’t save on that day, uncertain that they’d be saved the next.

To Go to Lvov

<)) listen

Adam Zagajewski
Adam Zagajewski was born in Lwów in June 1945. His family was expelled later that year to central Poland.

To go to Lvov. Which station
for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew
gleams on a suitcase, when express
trains and bullet trains are being born. To leave
in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September
or in March. But only if Lvov exists,
if it is to be found within the frontiers and not just 
in my new passport, if lances of trees
– of poplar and ash – still breathe aloud
like Indians, and if streams mumble
their dark Esperanto, and grass snakes like soft signs
in the Russian language disappear
into thickets. To pack and set off, to leave
without a trace, at noon, to vanish
like fainting maidens. And burdocks, green
armies of burdocks, and below, under the canvas
of a Venetian café, the snails converse
about eternity. But the cathedral rises,
you remember, so straight, as straight
as Sunday and white napkins and a bucket
full of raspberries standing on the floor, and
my desire which wasn’t born yet,
only gardens and weeds and the amber
of Queen Anne cherries, and indecent Fredro.
There was always too much of Lvov, no one could
comprehend its boroughs, hear
the murmur of each stone scorched
by the sun, at night the Orthodox church’s silence was unlike
that of the cathedral, the Jesuits
baptized plants, leaf by leaf, but they grew,
grew so mindlessly, and joy hovered
everywhere, in hallways and in coffee mills
revolving by themselves, in blue
teapots, in starch, which was the first
formalist, in drops of rain and in the thorns
of roses. Frozen forsythia yellowed by the window.
The bells pealed and the air vibrated, the cornets
of nuns sailed like schooners near
the theater, there was so much of the world that
it had to do encores over and over,
the audience was in frenzy and didn’t want 
to leave the house. My aunts couldn’t have known
yet that I’d resurrect them,
and lived so trustfully, so singly;
servants, cleaned and ironed, ran for
fresh cream, inside the houses
a bit of anger and great expectation, Brzozowski
came as a visiting lecturer, one of my 
uncles kept writing a poem entitled “Why”,
dedicated to the Almighty, and there was too much 
of Lvov, it brimmed the container,
it burst glasses, overflowed
each pond, lake, smoked through every
chimney, turned into fire, storm,
laughed with lightning, grew meek,
returned home, read the New Testament,
slept on a sofa beside the Carpathian rug,
there was too much of Lvov, and now
there isn’t any, it grew relentlessly
and the scissors cut it, chilly gardeners
as always in May, without mercy,
without love, ah, wait till warm June
comes with soft ferns, boundless
fields of summer, i.e., the reality.
But scissors cut it, along the line and through
the fiber, tailors, gardeners, censors
cut the body and the wreaths, pruning shears worked
diligently, as in a child’s cutout
along the dotted line of a roe deer or a swan.
Scissors, penknives, and razor blades scratched,
cut, and shortened the voluptuous dresses
of prelates, of squares and houses, and trees
fell soundlessly, as in a jungle,
and the cathedral trembled, people bade goodbye
without handkerchiefs, no tears, such a dry
mouth, I won’t see you anymore, so much death
awaits you, why must every city
become Jerusalem and every man a Jew,
and now in a hurry just
pack, always, each day,
and go breathless, go to Lvov, after all
it exists, quiet and pure as
a peach. It is everywhere.

— Adam Zagejewski, Selected Poems, Faber, London 2004


I performed this material in Moon At Night at Pentameters Theatre, Hampstead on 27 March 2022.

Up next The founding of Iverson College Untoward occurrence at embassy poetry reading
Latest posts A struggle for life Notes on post-secular – 2 Before I forget Homily 1 – Education Heroes and villeins Swimming to America Notes on post-secular – 1 Meditation as civil resistance Without reservations Tour notes A revolution in France Your right to bare arms Y q? The return of the king Clarity, rigour and Rory Stewart The World’s End Book Club Remembering Bel Macdonald Barts hearts and faces Summer on wheels All that jazz: The librarian’s song Sandals on their way home A short history of the Australian Flat White Cycling glove, slightly foxed Untoward occurrence at embassy poetry reading To Go to Lvov The founding of Iverson College The pot-boy’s story Prisoners of our own device How green is my valley The ghost in the shell Policing protests in Glasgow