Sunday, 13 March 2022

Poem for the Ukraine - Maggot

The sickening news, day after day, of senseless destruction - for what? 

Even the outcome we think Putin desires (but who can say..?) can never be good for him or Russia. 

Moved by last weekend’s news images I wrote this and posted it as ‘an emotional blurt’ on my personal Facebook page from where it’s started to spread. 

If we all pile our individual grains of pressure on the man maybe, just maybe, the weight will eventually be too much for him. A naive hope, no doubt, but what else can I do..?


Maggot 

March 7th, 2022


In cute dinosaur socks, 

a child dies on a gurney,

his inconsolable mother 

buckling at her knees.


The columns and crowds

of displaced and terrified,

pack platforms in stations

which no trains can leave.


A baby’s mitten, a child’s glove,

another, all dropped in the rush,

reach up from the sludge, 

as if the Earth is raising its hands.


Hunkered in bitter forests 

Russian boys with frozen rifles

make tearful videos on mobile phones.

Uninformed, misled, poorly planned.


The man with polonium eyes,

anti-socially distant and small,

so small, sits in a vast white room

like a maggot in a fridge.


His ridiculous table will never 

be long enough to bear all the names 

of the bodies in the graves he alone, 

with bare hands and buckled knees, should dig.

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