What is this ribald voice of our jagged ignorance
Which shatters Yalta's balm born of human suffering,
Spewing declarations of cold detachment from facts
Flooding from Europe’s frozen Ruthenian core?
The chronicles of criminal intrusions
Haunt Sarajevo and the Sudetenland
Where assassins and appeasement launched
Wars to ravage the world.
Conquerors rely upon others’ distracted disdain
For any embroilment in battles beyond their borders.
Kyiv’s clichéd tale of cyclical false hope and betrayal
Might craft one more thorn for its Messianic crown.
Now the Slavic city sheltered under golden cupolae
Taunts Yeltsin's tyrant clerk from Leningrad
To reclaim its freed soul for his mottled Motherland
On his self-serving quest for lost glories.
As we watch ...................
Image by Gleb Albovsky
Photo of Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine where Euromaidan protests began in November of 2013; Ukrainian students demanded that the government of Ukraine vote to join the European Union. Over the subsequent three months, nearly a million Ukrainians joined them in peaceful outdoor demonstrations in sub-freezing temperatures. The protestors persevered, despite bloody attacks by Berkut national security forces sent by the country's president, ultimately causing the Russian-backed Yanukovych to flee Ukraine by helicopter in early 2014. He was given asylum by President Putin in Rostov, Russia.
G. Bousquet-Williamson