Spring 2007

Chernobyl, Spring 2007

The man who wrote this is a real poet. His English is not perfect, but tidied up just a bit, it reads like literature, and is accompanied by some excellent photographs.

"The looters are superstitious and are afraid to rob churches. Also, nearby community volunteers fix the abandoned churches every few years, so like separate islands they stand longer than all the other buildings in the area. When I travel by, I often make a stop by the church. The door is unlocked. No one is inside, no priests, no smell of incense, no burning candles, only a couple of cheap icons, a slightly radioactive Bible and images of saints on the walls. I make sure the Bible is left open on the page where the age of wormwood is foretold. Then I stay for a while, looking at a radioactive image of Jesus and asking myself, "How long will these churches be here? Can they live without people?"