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Three images, three nightmares
remain of what was once
a city of four hundred thousand.
A classical theater sheltering 600,
visibly marked “children”
deliberately shelled.
A young woman on a stretcher
about to give birth
to her first child,
a stillborn son, and to die
shortly afterwards,
her hips shattered
by the pointed shelling
of a maternity hospital.
A massive steelworks
that began to operate
at the peak of the Holodomor,
harboring some thousand soldiers
and civilians in its labyrinthine tunnels,
the numbers dwindling,
sapped of strength
after 82 days of merciless
bombardment, like
the ruined airport
the Cyborgs held in 2015
until sapped of strength
after 116 days,
and forced to surrender.
This violent culture
of “crime without punishment,
punishment without crime,”
in pursuit of destruction
rather than flourishing,
(How dare you live so well?),
its death drive
a desire to let go
of responsibility,
of individuality,
choice and freedom,
to just give up.
All that’s left
after all the horrors unleashed
is the persistent winged spirit
of hope.
That the theater will rise again
above an amphitheater
for other children to attend,
that young mothers
will give birth
safely, easily,
surrounded by love,
that the steelworks
will fire up again,
its furnaces blasting
their molten heat,
a symbol of all
that is bright and good.
June 21, 2023
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