Amid dropped commas and epiphanies

An FPV drone pilot, Oleksii (Nemo) Palyanychka is stationed in the northern part of the Kharkiv region, where he navigates a landscape now marked by war, though his voice continues to carry the depth of a theatre critic. 

Before the service, Oleksii had been deeply immersed in Ukrainian theatre. His critical writing was not merely descriptive; it was a form of intellectual inquiry, often drawing on psychoanalysis to explore the symbolic, unspoken, and repressed elements in culture. 

Nemo is Latin for “nobody.” This choice is more than a pseudonym; it is a gesture toward the literary and philosophical, for Nemo is also the Latin translation of the Ancient Greek Outis, the name Odysseus gave to the Cyclops Polyphemus in Homer’s Odyssey. Rather than signalling anonymity in the conventional sense, the name Nemo is a strong statement that, in moments of great danger, when war reshapes the very grammar of existence, the collective self—fragile, dispersed, and interdependent—may matter more than the individual.

***

amid dropped commas and epiphanies left unanswered lies the condensed space 

of the white stain of consciousness the white crater of an unwritten life 

the white canvas of a written post of that which guides the hand but writes with you 

amid joy in simple truths and in the weariness 

lies the fragments of the moon the grains from an hourglass lies a cat purring 

someone forgot to put the commas in place 

the truths are unreadable 

amid the earth and whales adrift on the red hour of the horizon the tree roots claw the stronghold walls 

the fish talk and babble 

try to speak to the people 

the people say nothing 

eyes made of glass 

amid them all you hang from the blind branch of development hanging your thoughts to dry hanging the time from your neck amid the lines of history 

and philosophical treatises 

the rains linger on 

The poem is translated into English by Daisy Gibbons.