The Worst of Humankind - Part 1
War used to be some other place
Out of sight and mind;
But now we see on our tv
The worst of humankind.
An army has just marched across
Another country’s border,
Wreaking murder, unprovoked,
And violent disorder.
Are we so blind? We never learn.
We’ve seen it all before:
You say you come to keep the peace
But all you bring is war.
We had our chance in Georgia,
In Donbas and Crimea.
We kowtowed to a bully:
What chance to stop him here?
EU countries wring their hands,
They cannot seem to find
It in themselves to stand up to
The worst of humankind.
Europe now is mired in shame,
What fools to be reliant!
You have won your dirty game:
They squirm to be defiant.
Every drop of Russian oil,
Each life lost in Donbas
Is matched by blood on Ukraine’s soil,
Is sold for Russian gas.
We all know what you want to do,
You’ve made it very plain:
You want to crush beneath your heel
The people of Ukraine.
You want to grab a land that was
In history never yours,
With its own sovereign language
And its own sovereign laws.
We know that but, if you cease fire,
We’ll talk and then we might
Negotiate some settlement –
And we won’t have to fight.
What have we done to threaten you?
We don’t mean to offend,
But we must talk and sort this out:
We want this war to end.
Let’s talk, we must negotiate,
We do not want to fight.
(Please keep your finger off the switch,
Do not turn off the light!)
So please call back your armies,
Ukraine’s wounds must heal.
Just let the guns fall silent
And we can cut a deal.
We’ll help them to forget your crimes,
Erase them from their mind:
Atrocities committed by
The worst of humankind.
We’ll talk with you on their behalf,
I’m sure we can persuade
Them to renounce their birthright,
Leave the land-grab that you made.
But, though you’ve seen your plans collapse,
You will not change your mind;
Instead, defeat confirms you are
The worst of humankind.
You really do not like it
When Ukranians stand and fight;
And so you kill old men and girls
And murder them in spite.
When your troops are beaten back
What horrors do we find?
Mass graves and children murdered by
The worst of humankind.
Bodies lying in the street,
Hands tied tight behind;
Raped and mutilated by
The worst of humankind.
Near Kyiv graves of hundreds, perhaps
Thousands, have been found:
Those you haven’t blown to bits
You’ve buried in the ground.
Some quibble over genocide:
However it’s defined
What’s done has been committed by
The worst of humankind.
Copyright © Bob Trewin | Year Posted 2022
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