The title is Latin — contra spem spero, "against hope, I hope." The poem beneath it is one of the fiercest refusals to despair in Ukrainian literature, and it was written by a teenager who had every reason to give up.
The poet behind the pen name
Lesya Ukrainka was the pen name of Larysa Kosach. From the age of twelve she suffered from tuberculosis of the bone — the same disease, strikingly, that shaped Henley's Invictus. She spent much of her life in pain and in treatment, and still became one of Ukraine's greatest writers.
Flowers on the frost
She wrote Contra Spem Spero in 1890, at nineteen. Its images are all acts of stubborn defiance against a frozen world: I will sow flowers on the frost, she writes, and water them with my tears. It is not naive optimism. It is hope chosen deliberately, in full view of the cold — which is a harder and more useful thing.
Wear it
Our Contra Spem Spero tee carries the poem in Ukrainian and English. Part of our Poems for Ukraine line — NZ$5 from every shirt is donated.