Resolve and Resist – Slava Ukraini
Another day has passed.
The sand in the hourglass has silently shifted to the bottom
One wonders what is left to be said
Whether anything written will be read.
Will time be the Victor?
Or will the message outlast the inevitable conclusions of the task?
They stand like lonely travelers who reach the edge of a cavern ledge
Shouting to the other side warning of the dangers coming from behind
Only to hear echoes of their screams
Tumbling like helpless pebbles in a turbulent stream.
Images of crying children placed in the crosshairs of ignorance and hate
fill their minds.
Dropping to their knees, they sob for the innocent and the kind
Who will be left behind.
Oh, the impotence of the Poet’s words and prose shake him to his core.
What more can be done? Is the only path war?
They must be stopped, he thought.
He rose to his feet with a resolve he had not felt before.
A mist the death and destruction which may lie ahead – it must be said
No military machine can ever destroy the cry for freedom and liberty
No, the bully cannot hide. He cannot cremate the truth.
The “victors” can always write their version of history.
But somewhere packed in vessels hidden deep within the cave
Will be written the truth.
The actual truth of the terror perpetrated – the genocide created.
There must be an accounting. The journey must continue. It cannot end.
There are messages to be written in hope that they will someday be read.
The cries of the children must be heard screaming from the cave.
“Stand up to the Bear. Be unafraid. The future of the free world is in
your hands.
Be brave. Capitulation is not an option. We will be watching.”
Don’t Look Away
Look away they say
Its not your fight.
Look away from the naked aggression
Upon a peaceful sovereign nation.
Look away from the propaganda
Which attempts to destroy hundreds of years
Of a proud people.
Look away from the limp lifeless body of the child
In its father’s arms.
Look away from the flesh splashed
Across the apartment walls of civilians
Too old to escape the bombs.
Look away they are the “others”
They have strange names.
Their language is not ours – we can send flowers.
Look away it is too late.
But we know in the depth of our souls
That John Donne’s warning was right.
“No man is an island entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent
A part of the main…Any man’s death diminishes me
Because I am involved in Mankind…Therefore, never
Send to know for whom the Bell tolls: it tolls for thee.”
WE MUST NOT LOOK AWAY.