O, the pity of war.
We show sympathy,
Sorrow for the suffering Ukrainians;
As we see elderly men, women and children suffering,
Fleeing from a ruthless enemy
Who lies and says: it wasn’t his men who did
Such injustice and war crimes.
The poet Wilfred Owen said the poetry is in the pity.
Elegies, not consolatory words.
Owen says: ‘all a poet can do is to warn.
That’s why true Poets must be truthful.’
Can the poet speak of truthfulness,
When the men and women from Azovstal
Were granted a ‘corridor’ not by the UN,
But by the invaders?
The Russian corridor was unjust and a humiliation
For the fighters of Azovstal,
Who were treated like inferior beings by the conquerors,
And taken as prisoners to Russia.
Here hope has become rare and rationed,
Despite the bravery to keep the invader at bay.
No hint of harm was given to the people,
Who’d sought refuge in the bunkers of Azovstal
And Mariupol.
Nobody notified them,
No one admonished them.
In the end it was: surrender or die.
This was war.
A false corridor that led to the arms of the Russian foe
As prisoners of war,
Who greeted them with cruelty and glee;
After months of deprivation and missile attacks.
Who was going to tell the truth
Behind the tragedy of these people?
The media shows pictures of tanks and missiles
Being delivered or promised
By Europeans, Ausssies and Americans.
Weapons that came too late for the defenders
Of Mariupol and Azovstal.
They were the lambs that had to be sacrificed
In this war of the nations in Europe.
A strange war with rules dictated unilaterally
By an ex-KGB warlord in Kremlin.
Journalists and writers were declared outlaws
And punished severely for words that told the truth
About the exploits of the country’s war machinery.
War became a forbidden word.
It was sold as a mere conflict to free Ukraine from neo-Nazis.
Putin’s troops were out to denazify Ukraine.
Censorship and misinformation in full swing in Russia,
As in the days of the Third Reich.
How nice that Putin learned German thoroughly,
During his East German days with the Soviet Army;
Especially the Nazi methods to keep his own folk in the dark.
Simplicity is the magic rule.
Keep it simple for the peasant folk.
They know what Nazi and blitzkrieg mean.
They also know what KGB means.
No harm in borrowing tactics
That work for the masses.
The Russians buy Putin’s story.
O, the pity of war.