SONG FOR MARIUPOL

 

A lament, a dirge, a cry from the human heart,

for the old folk of Mariupol, weeping in cellars,

without food or water, without hope,
old men and women, longing
for a hot cup of tea,
a warm blanket, somewhere to lie down.

They have been here before; they know

how this goes, as their loved ones disappear:
devastated towns, their dwellings in rubble,
mass graves, executed loved ones,
bombs falling indiscriminately,
with no care  for civilian life. "Shoot them all!"

the soldiers are commanded, and,

somehow, they turn off the switch

of humanity in their heads and

follow orders: tape hands behind backs,

shoot people in the head: uncles, grandfathers,

grandmothers. They rape the young women first.
Deemed  "casualties of war," these people
who never wanted war, but who do not wish
to live under a dictatorship.

(What happens when the soldiers return home
to their wives and children? Will their dreams
be haunted by ghosts of the dead,
arriving at two a.m.
to ask them "why?")

Mass graves and destroyed buildings

where once life thrived - the spoils of war,
perpetrated by those without soul or conscience,

to whom genocide will bring 

perceived glory: more land - full of rubble,

devoid of human life - a testimony

to moral decrepitude.

What song can we sing as bombs rain down,
on three month old babies?

As people starve, terrified dogs run loose

in the streets, or shiver violently in the rubble?

Are we beyond hope, as a species,

in this land of lost souls? How can we sing

a whole peoples' persecution, for no reason

beyond one man's depravity and thirst for power?
(as if any power or wealth can be gained
from a rubbled landscape
full of graves.)

I sang all my life, but in my old age,

after all I have seen, and lived, and lost,

I don't think my throat can muster

a single note of a song for Mariupol.

I offer  instead my poem and my tears,

for this song is just way too sorrowful

to sing.

A sad song for The Sunday Muse