BACKGROUND: My mother’s mother and her uncle, born Wasyl and later called Charlie, were born in Ukraine. I loved both very deeply and, with limited facility, would speak Ukrainian as a child to each one. When Charlie died, I wrote this poem and it became the first of my poems to appear in a literary journal (Fiddlehead) and then in my first book of poetry (Bones to Bury). I’m sure that you can understand why, in these days of Putin’s acts of genocide, that I am posting this tribute to a gentle and kind Ukrainian man.
WASYL SZEWCZYK
by James Strecker (c) 1984
This method I learned
from Charlie:
After the meal
wash your bowl and spoon.
Let them dry
on the counter
until you eat again.
Be patient.
He was a bachelor.
In his seventh decade
they brought women,
like weather-beaten cattle,
to the timid man’s home
for him to take in
marriage. He rejected
the sagging Polish
widows and their matchmade
schemes for his land.
He left the house and garden
in a will. There was little
else: four boxes of novels
describing sophisticated
bachelors and accessible blondes,
and a handful of age-ruined
photographs, the girl
beautiful in 1921.
Had he loved her?
He wanted to nod his head yes,
but couldn’t.
He left an epithet, Charlie,
a handy anglicized substitute
for the alien Wasyl.
We removed two kinds of shirts
from his room: white shirts
covered with cellophane, then
dust (these should not be spoiled
too soon by common labourer’s
use) and others laden with sweat,
odors of work eating the fibres.
He wasted nothing, not even
his life.
Wasyl Szewczyk is dead,
Wasyl Szewczyk of Galicia,
a Ukrainian serf from a feudal
age who despised the priest
and his landowner’s god.
He had seen a pregnant girl
beaten by holy fists, had
fled to a dirty coal mining
town, a fourteen hour shift,
and wept from the pain
of his burned, bandaged hands.
His fingers learned to play
the clarinet, cut hair
with a barber’s expertise,
hold a book of Shevchenko’s
poetry. He was attuned, like
spring, to the delicacy
of creation.
At meals, he belched with
thanks, a peasant.
He lies buried in Beausejour,
Manitoba where he once pastured
cows, and his hair was black
as a rain-soaked prairie field.
Wasyl Szewczyk is dead.
There was little to say after him.
We lacked his wit, was it peasant
or Slavic, that taunted death
as a nuisance and friend.
He knew the dead to be lucky.
What aspect knows the man?
He posed unsmiling for photographs.
He lived a long life,
should have hated the world.
He wore a suit on Sundays.
Charlie Szewcyzk, the farmer
Wasyl, died last April
in his eightieth year.
At seventy-five
he had learned to play
the violin.