All around you missiles Are falling. Churches You once knew won’t Be there any more. The streets you walked Will be changed by Blood and shelling And bombs. It seems The world’s gone mad. As the Earth shakes, Not because of the rage Of the gods, but that One man wants to Win back a lost empire, You will think that Your world is being Shattered for ever. It is. But out of the destruction, Out of all this thunder, Something new will Come. Whatever happens Your land will know The courage of its soul, Its people; and history Will be rewritten not With the force of an autocrat But by the steadfast hope And desire to be true To the beauty of your earth And all you have Suffered. Katya in your Bomb shelter, we’re with you. We’re there in the shadows We’re there in the silence Between the explosions … * Those who destroy your land Destroy themselves. Always remember what Your land fights for, The right to its future, Without any force from Outside. Katya, we are Done with people forcing Us into their own dream. We are done with being Told who we can or can’t Be. A time comes when You stand and say My future’s mine to dream My land is mine to till My life is mine to imagine You will not break my truth You will not distort my Dream. You will not Destroy my future, who Ever you are. You may Pulverise our churches, Our roads, theatres, and our Hospitals, with hundreds Hiding in them, but you’ll Never touch the Fountain of our dreams, Or the deep world From which we will create Every day a radiant Land. From this bomb Shelter we’ll dream anew. Your shelling is our resurrection Your missiles are missives Of our regeneration. All that you ruin Are all those things Which must go so That we will for ever Be free to be what we Truly are. For even If you win, the victory Is ours. For you’ve Tempered our souls And revealed to us our True selves which we Might never have Found without your Wish to crush us. * Katya, in your bomb shelter, it’s A fearful thing When people act From the great emptiness Of a loss of empire. An empire is a vast ego, A gigantic delusion, and It makes people think That they own the Souls of others, that they Control the destiny Of nations, and that they Are somehow the masters Of the Earth. The loss Of such a delusion Can make people insane. Sometimes when a leader Is unhinged by this loss They are prepared To destroy the world so They can return To their lost dream Of vast terrains in which Once they were gods. * It’s not good for humans To entertain the delusion Of being gods. So Katya It is not your fault that Someone wants back What they should not Have taken. It’s not our Fault that we dream Of freedom, that we want To be ourselves, Live our lives, make Our own mistakes, And determine our own Destiny. No one can Rip that away from us. The age of empire is over. The age of freedom is Here. They may dominate Us still with their might and Their nuclear bombs, But they will not Determine who we shall Be, or where our Fire and our dreams Will take us. I am with You there in the bomb shelter. I am a bomb shelter child too. This will end. It will pass. So drink the sweet Waters of the Earth. Sing songs to one Another in this time Of darkness. The Monster’s worst roar Is often just before It falls. There are no real Monsters in life, Just people who’re Deluded, or mad, or Lost in ideas that stray Too far from the Wise road of the human. * Fires are howling In the streets that the Centuries built. There are tenements, Bomb-sliced in half, In which you can See the innards Of apartments. Your roots are entangled With the souls of those Who seek to murder you. I hear that their soldiers Weep as they drop Bombs on their distant relations. See, they’re driving Their knives into their own Hearts. Such a great Civilisation, home to Such madnesses. They learned nothing From Lev Tolstoy, Katya. They learned nothing. Napoleon tried to do The same thing. He Won too. But what A loss that was. They burned their famed City so that what he Won was ashes. He sat there in the throne Of ash, and eternal winter Descended on his head. That was the commencement Of his end. They learned Nothing from War and Peace. Nor from Hitler. A people determined To be free can Not be compelled To be unfree again. Even if you kill them. Do you know why, Katya? Well it’s because We are made of a stuff Not of this Earth And when we find Our truth a new beauty And force is added to The universe. * The missiles are falling. Children perish in bombed Out churches. An evil Is being planted in our Times and the whole World can see it. But missiles create lions From lambs, and bombs Awaken tigers. They Never learn, the deluded ones. They’ll kill hundreds Of thousands, but From those defeats An army of dragons Will be born. They Have changed the world, But not in the way they Thought. Katya, you Who live in the slip Stream of empires, Wake up fast. Grow Deep, strong and brave. Join the greater river Of human destiny. You can’t fight injustice And then be unjust to others. Every day you survive Brings your liberation Closer. Spirits Of the dead will you on. * The church will be rebuilt The streets will be made new There will be festivals in the square. You will taste grapes from Greece, Apples from the Hesperides And sweet oranges from Africa. And one day your laughter Will defeat the vacuum missiles And the bombs will fade Into the depths of your freedom. A soft wind from the Bosphorus Will weave your hair And the sun-kissed snow Will temper the grim memories Of this bomb shelter where you grow. Ben Okri is a novelist and poet. He is the author of Every Leaf a Hallelujah and The Famished Road Voices of Ukraine: writers including Ian McEwan and Karl Ove Knausgaard will read work by Ukrainian authors at a Guardian Live event in London 0n Monday 11 April. The event will also be livestreamed and all profits will be donated to the DEC Ukraine appeal. Book here