Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Maria Matios

nearly the same mother tongue, and the same way folded their hands to say the same “Our Father,” on one and the same day celebrated Christmas and Easter, and even their dress was similar, and their oaths, and way of saying thanks. The people only greeted each other on the two sides of the river a little differently, that is nearly the entire difference. But from time to time the land of their ancestors shifted from one country to another, like a weak-willed woman going into the arms of a more capable man, and because of that, from time to time and over many years, so many that they sometimes were chiseled into the centuries, the people under the twin hills were divided by a border that passed right along the middle of the river

not subject to such changes. On that day when the suddenly orphaned Mykhailo peeped under virtually every stone on the shoreline meadow, his Cheremoshne belonged to Romania, where King Mihai served as God and king for his subjects, and here, on the very border of Romania Mare, in the village tucked into the mountains above the Cheremosh,the king’s intermediaries – soldiers serving from the local gendarmes headed by Lieutenant Lupul and the local landowners – were kings and Gods. When, who ruled, and for how long on the other side of the river, Mykhailo didn’t know very well, but he knew precisely that in his memory the Polish lords, the Pany , along with their gendarmes and soldiers maintained

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