How to capture a year in 100 words?
Beyond, but myself like never before.
Weightlessness, but cement pain, too.
As if it weren't home, but as if it were.
Life in antonyms.
I checked the meanings of words in dictionaries.
Patria, locus natalis, Heimat.
Which one is радзіма?
The sedge warbler closes her eyes, waiting for the first leaf
to unfurl.
A true
homeland only exists in dreams.
Ancient scrolls offer more answers
than my newsfeed, which I haven't read for a year now.
And I talk with moths and birds more and more often.
They don't ask any questions.
They just are.
And let me simply be where there is no time and no words.
This poem was written as an answer
to a question I got from a journalist,
Belarusian journalist, after the year of protest started 2020.
And they made interviews or asked Belarusian writers,
and poets, and cultural people like, how was this year for you?
So can you describe how did it go?
And please in 100 words.
And that was my answer.