As If Nothing Else Matters
by Michael Doyle

How do you protect Russian speakers
By bombing them into oblivion?
Mix up that experiment in your beaker
You say you're doing this as a guardian?

Returning to the homeland of the Rus
While treating the natives as if refuse
Waste that cannot be used and is buried in a landfill
Tell me then, Valdimir, of your wicked thrill

A three prong of attack and still you stall
As "Little Russians" stand firm as a wall
False flags with patience stated as limited
Will Belarus be pulled in as has been predicted?

Kyiv sees her fruited jams all turned to black
Knowing full well the risk of imminent attacks
As intelligence is provided by a chief of the FSB
Beseda attempted to bring down the Defense Ministry

Making it empathetically clear this is Putin's war
Odessan children won't cry tears any more
Scenes from a poem or a movie seem turned surreal
But the city trembles realizing this is too real

Ukrainian grandfathers fought Nazis on their tractors
This historical vision acts to encourage and bolster
The courage of Ukraine armed with sticks and stones
Maternity wards are bombed and the grandmothers groan

It may be lucrative to forget what cannot be forgot
The tyrant may yet win but street urchins will plot
These are the riches that exceed all the world's money
In this land blessed with plains of wheat and honey

A forty mile long Russian convoy stalls
As Ukrainian bodies stand firm as walls
Willing to keep on living; refusing to die
As the world watches and collectively sighs

It's unbearable, these things we have seen
Children plea from eyes grown older than human beings
Whose souls are worn down to sheerest tatters
Poets and dreamers carry on as if nothing else matters

(c) March 20, 2022  Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved