April 26, 2023 marks the 37th anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which became the largest nuclear disaster in history. The accident claimed the lives of hundreds of people and caused irreparable damage to the environment. Since then, on this date, every year in Ukraine honors all the people who died or suffered from this disaster, and also honors the liquidators of the consequences of the accident.

This rain is like a shower. This day is so kind.
The gardens are blooming. Sap ferments in birch trees.
This is the nightingale's opera, La Scala!
Chernobyl Zone. The twenty-first century.

There is a lilac flood in the yards.
Here those lilacs break through the mud.
Here the pike goes like a submarine,
and geese come every spring.

But the bells sprouted through the porches.
A people lived above Pripyat and disappeared.
Toadstools grew in the Red Forest,
and Death walks, the only mushroom picker here.

Lina Kostenko