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Bob Trewin Poem
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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Bob Trewin Poem
The birdscarers have been at work in Mariupol.
Not with firecrackers in barrels
But shells and rockets.
There is no birdsong in the trees in Mariupol.
The birds have left.
There are no trees.
The trees are splinters.
The flowers that bloom are Pion shells,
Blossoming red among apartment blocks.
Spring recoils at Mariupol.
An ashen winter has corroded buildings,
Left bleached and blackened skeletons;
A winter made in munitions factories
And spread broadcast like cancered seed.
There is no perfume of spring blossom in the air;
The smell of burning drifts across the rubble and
Sweet, sickly odours hang heavy.
There is no birdsong in the trees in Mariupol.
The birds have left,
All but the carrion crows.
Copyright © Bob Trewin | Year Posted 2022
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Bob Trewin Poem
So, how to end this senseless war
You Russians have begun?
No peace again until Ukraine
Has smashed you, every one.
We’ll give them lethal weaponry
To fight our proxy war.
We’ll empty out the corners of
The Quartermaster’s store.
But you don’t like it when we give them
Weapons to fight back:
Planes and tanks and howitzers,
The heavy stuff they lack.
You squeal and say that’s cheating,
Like the bully that you are,
When we even up the fight,
Bring Ukraine up to par.
Mutually Assured Destruction:
That’s what you’re threatening now.
Your big red button makes you brave,
You think that you can cow
Us, shrink us from the brink
– ‘We don’t want to die!’ –
But are your generals brave as you?
Are they prepared to fry?
We know you mean the opposite
Of all the lies you spout,
So when you say you’ll nuke us all
It’s time to call you out.
But if you’ve really lost your mind,
Nothing will be enough.
Let’s face the worst of humankind:
It’s time to call your bluff.
Meanwhile, we watch the tv news
And try not to be blind
To all the crimes committed by
The worst of humankind
And try to quell the rage that clouds
The judgement and the mind:
The fury, rage and anger at
The worst of humankind.
Copyright © Bob Trewin | Year Posted 2022
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Bob Trewin Poem
Now you’re turning to the south
To save your battered face,
To claim some sort of victory
By flattening the place.
If soldiers cannot win your war
You’ll bomb and you will shell:
Blow everything to smithereens,
Turn towns to living hell.
Your army isn’t up to much:
Fighting’s too much trouble.
Instead, you bomb the place to bits,
Reduce Ukraine to rubble.
There is no place of safety:
No shelter can survive.
You bomb the schools and hospitals;
You bury them alive.
You keep civilians bottled up,
Deprived of heat and water,
And when you say you’ll let them out
You lead them to the slaughter.
You say you’ll let the buses leave
(At least, that’s what you tell them);
You wait until they’re moving out
And then you start to shell them.
Now you’re using cluster bombs
With fuses that delay.
You aim to kill civilians;
You think that’s all okay.
Your brain is wired up differently,
The Devil rules your mind.
You are an aberration:
The worst of humankind.
You’ve overstepped the mark and put
Yourselves beyond the pale;
And we’ll have lost our self-respect
Unless we make you fail.
Diplomacy, diplomacy,
Diplomacy is dead.
The only language Russia speaks
Is bullets in the head.
We can’t believe a word you say,
You are inveterate liars
And you are making Russia
A nation of pariahs.
Do not feed the crocodile,
Appeasers please take note;
Although we may be last of all,
He’ll have us by the throat.
When this war is over
And when Ukraine has won,
We all must hold you to account
For all the damage done.
You must pay reparations,
Just as at Versailles;
You must not wriggle out of it
No matter how you try.
You must be made to pay the price,
The senseless, futile cost
Of murderous destruction
And all the people lost.
Your leaders must stand in the dock
And all the ranks behind:
You must be made examples of
The worst of humankind.
There is no longer Fog of War:
Your crimes are all recorded
And catalogued for all to see.
Your sins will be rewarded.
What’s happening now must never fail
To prompt us and remind
Us just how vile and evil are
The worst of humankind.
Copyright © Bob Trewin | Year Posted 2022
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