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the way through, clearly, without stopping.” I glanced at the old clock. My grandmother was about to bring out the rich, warm food. I began reading through the poem, “The sun is setting, the mountains darken/The bird quiets, the field silences.” As I con tinued reading, my mind did something it had not done in years. I started to think in Ukrainian. The automatic translator in my mind shut off, and I was given over to the sound and feel of the poem. I captured a vision of the landscape at dusk. I experienced the yearning of the poet for his homeland. The forlorn cry to the stars was shared. I felt its resonance of beauty, pain, and pride. For a few brief moments I gained a true feel for a lan guage I thought I was familiar with. I knew a different way of thought, a new world. I looked up at my grandfather, amazed. I finally understood why it was so important to him that I read the poem. The poem itself kept Ukraine alive by keeping the language alive and a language is more than words, it is the feelings and thoughts it expresses. Ukrainian holds in it the essence of Ukraine. The deaths of my great uncles and millions of others are commemorated and valued when the language is used. Taras Shevchenko’s poem made me realize the beauty of my language and let me feel thought behind it. It also allowed me to glimpse the heritage is kept alive. In doing so, it rekindled a sense of the past I had almost let go. Since then, there has been a birth of desire to learn. I am still not that good at reading Ukrainian, but I am trying to get through more of Shev chenko’s poetry. My mother is letting me borrow her Kobzar. My vocabulary is limited, my speech often broken, but I dream. I hope some day I can sit in the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine, read Shevchenko, and converse with my relatives there. Christina Hancher is a student at Youngstown State Uni versity in Ohio. NOTES FROM A SENTIMENTAL GARDENER by TAMARA STADNYCHENKO In the opening scene of Oscar Wilde’s "The Impor tance of Being Earnest”, one of the main characters attempts to justify his dreadful piano playing to his bemused butler. ”1 don’t play accurately — anyone can play accurately — but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.” I have much the same attitude toward gardening, a process which is, for me, filled with sentiment and wonderful expression and has very little to do with science and accuracy. I am a city slicker by breeding. The row houses and duplexes in which I was raised in Philadelphia had no real gardens, only small patches of grass in front and perhaps slightly larger patches behind with grass and a rose bush or two. My father, who studied forestry before emigrating to the United States, would occasionally intrigue my sister and me by planting carrots and toma toes and even potatoes in these patches, but his inter ests in gardening were of a pragmatic nature and no one else in the family had much inclination to plant any thing at all. When my grandmother came from Ukraine to live with us, the small patch in front of our duplex was transformed into a lush blanket of "barvinok” — shiny green leaves and delicate purple flowers which I still don’t know the English name for. She tended it lov ingly and carefully — there were no weeds and no bald patches and no complaints. When my grandmother moved to Australia and my parents moved to the sub urbs, some of the “barvinok” went to the new address and was planted on a sloping section of the front lawn where it and sundry weeds thrived. My father, whose intersts in gardening had expanded to trees and shrubs 24 "НАШЕ Ж ИТТЯ”, ТРАВЕНЬ 1995 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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