My passport says “American”,

I grew up in Ukraine,

No single culture in my head,

The upper hand did gain.

 

I have my own third culture,

I mix the other two,

And if anything at all it gives,

A substantially wider view.

 

So I have to ask, America,

It seems you’re not aware,

Much of what’s beyond your door,

How people live out there.

 

So why the lack of interest?

There’s beauty here, you know,

Steppes spread green in summer,

In winter decked with snow.

 

So listen to the voice,

A Kobzar, old and blind,

Strumming stings of music,

The bonds of past unbind.

 

 Ukraine is full of stories,

The history rich with song,

 Dancing figures in a line,

Fourteen centuries long.

 

The heroes of our people,

Have suffered more than yours,

Much blood is in the soil,

From oppression and the wars.

 

A people conquered for so long,

 Mongols. Russian Tsars.

And yet we never did forget,

The glory that was ours.

 

Once, in ages long ago,

Kievan Rus did stand,

A power of the east,

No foe could well withstand.

 

Then came years of darkness,

The Golden Hoard descends,

Meanwhile up in Muscovy,

A Kremlin new ascends.

 

We were under foreign thrones,

The Polish rule was cold,

But this did not sit well at all,

For the free Cossacks bold.

 

They led the uprising and then,

For a short time at least,

The Cossack State resisted,

But its life was on a lease.

 

For Moscow came to claim us,

The Tsar made known his rule,

The Bolsheviks maintained the claim,

They used us as a tool.

 

1940, the Fascists came,

Oh, many a woman wept!

While we stood along the front,

America sat and slept.

 

We won the dreadful war,

“For the Fatherland!” we called,

As we marched into Berlin,

.Bombed and broken walled.

 

Do Americans remember this?

They think they won the day,

They forget the Eastern Front,

The thickest of the fray.

 

But back to our long history,

Ukraine was still not free,

Stalin not a ruler kind,

That anyone can see.

 

It wasn’t till the soviet rule,

Collapsed that we became,

Free and independent,

Our futures to obtain.

 

But still the road is hard,

Our country young gets on,

With trouble and corruption,

And now EuroMaidan.

 

But often the only things,

That readily Americans think,

Are, “where is that?” or, instead

“Chernobyl really stinks”.

 

There are many things too change,

But this I wish to do,

To tell the tale of Ukraine,

That you would love it, too.

 

And Ukraine is not the only one,

 With songs of ages gone,

Americans, listen, listen more,

To the varied lays beyond!

 

I wish that you could love,

Or know a bit at least,

The People, cultures of the world,

The varied nation’s feast.