Here is a song-lyric version, keeping the pain, anger, and dignity of the original text written by Sergey Dutka, a Nikopol poet. To all the victims, displaced by wars in so many parts of the world.
Nikopol, evacuation without a choice
[Verse 1]
In the fifth year of thunder,
They came without a voice,
No question for the people,
No mercy, and no choice.
“Pack your lives by morning,
Leave the doors behind,
Take the children, take the old ones,
Leave your world confined.”
[Pre-Chorus]
Where will the children sleep tonight?
Who will warm the old?
They send us to strange stations
With our memories in the cold.
[Chorus]
They drive us from our own homes,
From the city that survived,
We shouted, “Nikopol is standing
As long as we’re alive.”
But now the road is empty,
And the sky is turning stone,
It feels like we were conquered
By the hands we called our own.
[Verse 2]
We did not fear the sirens,
We did not fear the night,
We learned to live in darkness,
We learned to live through fright.
It wasn’t the explosions
That broke the heart in two,
But leaving with no answer,
Not knowing what is true.
[Pre-Chorus]
Where will we go tomorrow?
What waits beyond the rain?
A stranger’s door, a foreign floor,
A life without a name.
[Chorus]
They drive us from our own homes,
From the city that survived,
We shouted, “Nikopol is standing
As long as we’re alive.”
But now the road is empty,
And the sky is turning stone,
It feels like we were conquered
By the hands we called our own.
[Bridge]
Who gave you the right
To measure out our fate?
Who gave you the right
To close our city’s gate?
We held this place like soldiers,
We held it through the flame,
Now hope is packed in silence,
And grief has got our name.
[Verse 3]
You broke the ones who held on,
Who stayed through every cry,
Who feared not death, but exile,
The slowest way to die.
For home is not a building,
Not walls, not glass, not stone,
It is the part inside us
That dies when we’re alone.
[Final Chorus]
They drive us from our own homes,
From the city that survived,
We shouted, “Nikopol is standing
As long as we’re alive.”
But now the road is empty,
And the sky is turning stone,
It feels like we were conquered
By the hands we called our own.
[Outro]
No answer in the morning,
No comfort in the night,
Our own have taken from us
The road, the hope, the light.
Nikopol, remember,
Even if we’re gone,
A city is not broken
While its people carry on.