The Code Was Wrong

By Matthew Parish

Monday 5 October 2026

The sirens had been going half an hour,

The street was black, the soldiers gone away;

Kharkiv endured beneath its concrete towers

The usual end to an unusual day.

I reached the hotel door with mounting dread,

And punched the little numbers I’d been given.

A red light blinked. I tried them twice instead.

Somewhere above, a rocket crossed the heaven.

Again. Incorrect. The keypad gave its beep,

That small electronic note of disapproval.

The city, bombed and frozen half asleep,

Seemed better organised for my removal.

There comes a point when dignity departs.

The body has no politics or pride;

No Kantian law restrains the lower parts,

Nor Hegel keeps necessity inside.

And so upon Kharkiv’s principal street,

After the curfew, crouching by a wall,

I found philosophy and bowels meet

And civilisation suddenly seem small.

No taxi passed. No policeman appeared.

The sirens wailed their warning to the night.

A distant detonation, faintly heard,

Made my predicament seem almost slight.

Perhaps this is what history really means:

Not marble men, nor speeches, flags or drums,

But someone squatting where the streetlamp leans,

Discovering what inevitably comes.

At last I tried the numbers once again.

Green light. The lock released me from my shame.

I entered, colder, chastened by the rain,

A lesser man, though outwardly the same.

Tomorrow Kharkiv’s traffic will resume.

The cafés will make coffee, trams will start.

No plaque will mark that melancholy gloom

Where flesh defeated intellect and art.

And that is best. The city has its dead,

Its shattered flats, its soldiers and its scars.

It need not know what happened while it bled

Beneath the indifferent October stars.