Some poems are famous as poems. Chary nochi — "Enchantment of the Night" — is famous as a song. Most Ukrainians know its melody before they know it was ever a poem at all.
The poet with two names
Oleksandr Oles was the pen name of Oleksandr Kandyba (1878–1944). He wrote in a warm, musical, deliberately singable style, and Chary nochi — sometimes known by its first line, "The nightingales are laughing and weeping" — is his most beloved work. Written in 1904, it was set to music and passed into the national songbook.
Seize the night
Its argument is pure youth: the night is too beautiful to waste on sleep; love now, because spring and beauty don't return. It's a carpe diem poem turned toward the dark — carpe noctem — and its lightness is poignant, because Oles's own life turned heavy. He emigrated after the revolution and died in exile in Prague in 1944; his son, also a poet, was killed by the Gestapo.
Wear it
Our Chary Nochi tee carries the poem in Ukrainian and English with a nightingale motif. Part of our Poems for Ukraine line — NZ$5 from every shirt is donated.