Yevhen Sverstiuk (1928–2014) was a literary scholar, poet, Doctor of Philosophy, dissident, and one of the leading figures of the Ukrainian resistance movement of the 1960s–1980s. This collection presents his poetic legacy from different periods of his life: poems written during imprisonment and exile in the 1970s–1980s, early works from his youth collection From the Green Rustle, and texts created during the formative years of the Sixtiers movement.

The volume combines poems already familiar from previous publications with newly discovered works from the author’s manuscripts. Here Sverstiuk emerges as a poet of intense spiritual depth — elusive and yet profoundly recognizable, reminiscent of Hryhorii Skovoroda: mysterious, wandering, and filled with a sense of journey and distant horizons. The book is permeated with a spirit of lofty sacrificial idealism, as the author chooses to be a Knight with a Sword in the vast open world. His sword is the Word — a sacred weapon of the knight of truth and beauty.