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My name is Padre Go Toma. And over years of working with people who have been in situations of high conflict, or people who've survived wars, one of the things that's become clear is the ways within which there's a deep discernment about what's important that happens among people who are in a war, and particularly in this. I mean, people who are powerless to stop the war that's being imposed upon them. There is clarity of the simplicity of life, of what is deeply necessary, of what is frivolous that can be put away, and what it is that is powerfully sustaining. And this occurs to people right in the moments it seems, or perhaps it just deepens or heightens right in the moment when you're facing the possibility that somebody arbitrary to you might take it away. Arguments for Peace by Oksana Maksimchuk how could there be a war in this city with cobblestone streets, glowing stars in the windows, festive dogs in felt, deer antlers in a central park, children sled down the hills making sharp, joyful noises, and the clusters of snow that fall cover up their tracks, landing gently on hands and faces. Perfectly formed cakes in the lit display cases are yet more proof of the goodness of the universe. In the glowing interiors we dip noses in whipping cream on purpose and pretend not to notice when somebody's phone lights up with a face of a foreign leader warning of invasion. What's a missile to do with a concert hall full of children? What's an air raid to do with a holiday celebration? With glasses of sparkling wine we gather around lit trees we say it couldn't be war wouldn't dare come Seeing how happy we are, how good our lives and all that we've got to lose. We love our children too much, we love our homes too much and so we argue time and again There'll be no war, there'll be no war. This poem by Oksana Maksimchuk begins with a question which is, how could there be war in a city like this? And then it describes that city, a winter park and cakes and decorated homes. And then we hear about the habits of ignoring phone notifications. And then more questions. What's a missile to do with a concert hall full of children and an air raid to do with a holiday celebration? And then it goes back to describing wine and lit trees and a kind of a bewilderment. We say, it couldn't be war, wouldn't dare come. There's a whole list of words in this poem that are being employed for the purpose of describing something that's really inviting and quite delightful. When the same language is used sometimes in describing war. So you think of sparkling and lights up and hands and faces and landing and tracks and then especially clusters of snow. The usage of language like this is perhaps all that's left to take the language of invasion, to take the language of war, to take the language of assault and the metaphors that it uses, and to return them to the uses that are hospitable, that are generative, that are hopeful, that may not be true, unfortunately, but that a person wishes to be true. And this brings me into the crisis of the poem, which is, how could something so terrible happen in a beautiful place? How can I believe what's plainly happening around me, what I'm being notified of, what's invading into holiday celebrations amidst the beauty, amidst the happiness, how can war come there? And on a level, underneath the narrative of the poem, it feels like something is being asked of language. It's like language is being asked to be good enough, when everything, even language, is bewildered and finding it very hard to make sense. And even the language that you typically use to make sense of the world isn't giving you any sense, making the final repetition of we argue time and again, there'll be no war. There'll be no war. It seems to me to be an attempt to tell yourself that something isn't true even while you know it is true. And telling yourself that what's happening all around you couldn't be happening all around you is one of the ways we all respond to crisis, or most of us, anyway. People who've grown up in war, surrounded by the sounds of armaments or missiles or gunshots or explosions, other things shock them, which might be the absence of those things. Such a terrible accustomization to the crisis, to invasion, to sirens, to sounds, to the ending of life. One of the under layers of this is the shock, is the resistance, is the idea that even language itself is struggling to come to terms with reality. All the while that reality is all around you. Children sled down the hills making sharp joyful noises. Just that end part of that line, sharp joyful noises. If you took out joyful, you're left with sharp noises, which feels like even in the joy, there's the understanding about what the cracks of firearms might be or weapons. There's grief and accusation and realization. And this hearing, what you don't want to hear, in amongst the things that you do hear. This poem is from Oksana Maksimchuk's collection titled Still Diary of an Invasion. And it's a title that works in so many ways. A still city can be like imagining something akin to a still life, but another way of looking at still city is looking at something that is still a city, saying that a city under siege, a city under threat, is still a city, functioning and living and filled with people who have families and lives and people who are desperately trying to keep things alive even as things are being destroyed. The second part of the title of the collection, Diary of an Invasion, the word diary is so interesting, so everyday, but it alerts our attention to the fact that this collection of poetry is deeply rooted in what is actually happening, in an unfolding daily recollection and recital and detailing of what it is that is true about the events of the days. Oksana Maksimchuk was born in Lviv in Ukraine, and she started writing this collection there, and then in many other cities as well, in Budapest and Vienna and Warsaw and some US cities as well, Chicago especially. And in many of the identifying features of this particular city that's detailed in the poem, arguments for peace are removed. We don't know what city it is and which winter holiday, which traditions. They're all slightly opaque. You can see them, you can feel them, you can guess, you can project into them, but they're left with an open door, in an act of hospitality, but also in an act that might make you feel like, well, this could be my city. And that might be part of the function. The still life painting of this particular place is perhaps like a mirror in which you might be able to see elements of your own holidays around the wintertime being reflected. There's a deep simplicity in what's being described. Everyday beautiful things, the kind of city life that you'd go, I'd like to be part of that. And that's it's confronting nature in the fact that this is also about a place where there's an overcurrent and an undercurrent of profound threat and war happening. The people are bewildered in amidst the snow and the dogs with the funny deer antlers and the cakes and the games and the champagne. There are people who are frightened, people who are keeping up the practice of trying to pretend that something's okay and still asking, how can this be happening here? There is the mention particularly of the foreign leader, and then that line, war wouldn't dare come, seeing how happy we are. The seemingly neutral language of speaking about war as if war and acts itself, and also the opaque way within which this non defined city is being described, perhaps seems like it's being naive. But this is not a naive poem. Part of me wonders if it wants to be, if it would dream about a naivete where you could imagine that what is going to come might be an improvement. But this recognizes that that would be an illusion. And it is holding an illusion for now, knowing fully that the illusion probably won't last. Oksana Maksimchuk grew up in a house where one parent, her father was a well known and respected actor. He was considered a dissident actor. There was a KGB detail who infiltrated and became a friend of his to inform on him. Her mother was a doctor. And she describes that it was a small house, small apartment at one point, I think that nonetheless was filled with people. This is a house of culture and acting and an understanding of the truth of what it is that acting does, where there's an understanding of the devastation that might be underneath the elevated story, the joyful story, the funny story, the play acting that acting is describing. These people are pretending normality because and in order to detail the truth of the devastation of what it is that they're facing. This is classic tragic comedy because there's beauty uplifting in the midst of it, amidst the tragedy that the escalated, elevated moment of these rituals that are holding them together are being held together in a way where people have absolutely no idea what might be coming the next day, the next month, the next minute. And it's a totally understandable thing to turn to those moments of ritual and celebration and that the everyday, the ordinary, the beautiful, the culture, the practices that have sustained you and have held you together in your community feel even more important. I believe everything that this poem says, this diary, a still image about what people do in winter and what people do in the face of something as terrifying as this. So who's speaking in this poem? Is a question that I wonder. As I've read it over and over, the speaker is clear and confused, the confusion being, how could this happen here? Just look. Look at how beautiful it is. And language and the essence of language and the sense making fact is being pushed. And the distance between the language we use and the events that are unfolding all around us is being increased in its drama, increased in its distance. You see, especially in that line, pretend not to notice. When somebody's phone lights up with a face of a foreign leader warning of invasion, pretend not to notice. Sometimes around children you pretend not to notice in a way of demonstrating real affection or demonstrating permissiveness, but they're pretending not to notice here around these holiday celebrations. These are macabre, threatening, and there's no doubting the truth about what's going on. But you pretend. The word pretend can mean to hold out or just stretch out, you know, the imagination or the desperate hope or the exquisite moment of now as well, when the worst thing hasn't happened yet, even though it might be just around the corner, the light of the trees, I find that that can be turned in an almost diabolical way into the light of the awful news shining from your ph. And then saying, I can't believe it, even though everybody plainly does believe it and know it, is a way of saying, I do believe it, but I don't want to. Language can hold so many different layers in the face of itself that just because something is said on the surface, I suppose it doesn't mean that the under surfaces of that, that the deep layers of it aren't being felt and said at the same time. We're turning to the very simple statement in order to contain something that is deeply multilayered. And so asking a question like, what's a missile to do with a concert hall full of children is to find a small refuge in a question where you know that that question won't protect you from the devastation of a missile that's being directed at a concert hall full of children. These are terrible things that we have to do with language and that language does to us. And there's a disempowerment in this because asking these questions and as a profound demonstration of people who are saying, I wish I could stop, I wish my language could stop this, I wish I could find a way to intervene. But there's no agency in the speaker of this poem, not because they're lacking agency in themselves, but because they're not the one who's declaring war, who's causing war, who's aiming missiles at people. The language is strained in this short poem, and it's also exquisitely beautiful. There's music in Oksana Maksimchuk's writing here. She writes sometimes in Ukrainian, sometimes in English. I believe this poem was written primarily in English. And what is unfolding in front of us? If you excised all of the things that are terrible about it, you would feel like, oh, this is a romantic poem. And the conversation is alive and electric between people. We gather around lit trees and it's intense and beautiful and it's filled with community, filled with people, filled with multi generational looking and protection. So of course there's a solidarity when we hear war wouldn't dare come, it's a comfort, and it's a comfort that I think I'd turn to too. And also, none of these people believe it, because if you're saying it, you're also saying you know the opposite, that war dares to come. Because what the poem is witnessing is that it has come and that these are the kind of things that we say in war. I can't believe war has come. Arguments for Peace by Oksana Maksimchuk how could there be a war in this city with cobblestone streets, glowing stars in the windows, festive dogs in felt deer antlers in a central park, children sled down the hills making sharp joyful noises, and the clusters of snow that fall cover up their tracks, landing gently on hands and faces. Perfectly formed cakes in the lit display cases are yet more proof of the goodness of the universe in the glowing interiors we dip noses in whipping cream on purpose and pretend not to notice when somebody's phone lights up with the face of a foreign leader warning of invasion. What's a missile to do with a concert hall full of children? What's an air raid to do with a holiday celebration? With glasses of sparkling wine we gather around lit trees we say it couldn't be war wouldn't dare come. Seeing how happy we are, how good our lives and all that we've got to lose. We love our children too much, we love our homes too much and so we argue time and again There'll be no war, there'll be no war.