8.3.2016 (#67) Before the Disaster by Myron Lysenko

Most of the region is woodland

wolves and wild boar thrive in forests

wolves in broad daylight, lynx tracks in snow

and huge herds of boar, roe deer, and elk

ducks, egrets, swans, and black storks feed

as a moose watches from the other side of the river.

There used to be farms here.

Chornobyl is a Ukrainian word for mugwort,

the words chornyi and byllia,

mean "black grass" or "black stalks".
It is close to the capital Kiev
not too far from the borders of Russia and Belarus.
Its name first appeared in a charter of 1193,

described as a hunting-lodge.

It became a crown village of the Grand Duchy

of Lithuania in the 13th century.

In the second half of the 18th century,

it became one of the major centres of Hasidic Judaism.

In 1919–20 it was taken first by the Polish Army  

and then by cavalry of the Red Army.

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin built collective farms

and moved thousands of farm workers there.
Two world wars were fought there on the ground.
The nearby marshes were partially drained by canals
and turned into farm fields.

The Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant

was commissioned in 1977.

Before the nuclear accident in April 1986,

Chornobyl’s population was 14,000 residents

Once a former cultural centre,

now an abandoned, ruined ghost town
with a population of seven hundred.