When we started the Ukrainian series, we made a quiet promise: NZ$5 from every Ukrainian-line tee goes to Ukraine relief, sent on to Kiwi K.A.R.E. No fanfare, no "buy a shirt, save a life" — just a small, fixed amount, given each time one of these poems finds a home.
It's early, and the numbers are small. But small is honest, and we'd rather show you exactly what has happened than round it up into something it isn't. So here is every donation to date, by the day the order came in — customers kept anonymous, poems named with pride:
- 20 August 2026 — Zhuravli, "The Cranes" (Bohdan Lepky)
- 20 August 2026 — Contra spem spero, "Against Hope, I Hope" (Lesya Ukrainka)
- 25 August 2026 — Why Do You Come to Me in Dreams? (Ivan Franko)
- 25 August 2026 — Contra spem spero, "Against Hope, I Hope" (Lesya Ukrainka)
Four tees, four donations — NZ$20 to Kiwi K.A.R.E for their work in Ukraine.
It isn't much yet, and we won't pretend otherwise. But Lesya Ukrainka wrote of sowing bright flowers into the frost and watering them with bitter tears — of hoping on, stubbornly, without much reason to. That's about the size of it. Every tee adds five dollars and carries one more poem a little further from home.
Thank you to the four of you. The receipts are kept, and we'll update this page each time the line gives again.
The Ukrainian line lives here — Poems for Ukraine. Every tee carries the original Ukrainian on the front and an English translation on the back, and every one adds another NZ$5.
— Palimpsest
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