Cargo 200: The same consignment but a different time.
The bodies of sons, pale with lime.
Manifest horror shrouded in black polythene,
God alone knows what the contents had seen.
Young men fighting for the bitter ruble the new Macedonian King had paid.
After weeping over the remains he\'d surveyed.
At the border his soldiers daubed zigzags while they were waiting;
Death\'s zed I.D. on their armour plating.
Then the sky grew dark where people lived and let live.
Heaven help Kharkiv, Mariupol, Bucha and Chernihiv
But as the seventy-twos rumbled in for the kill,
Their turrets were popped like scarabs on a grill.
So the generals sent for more tanks
with paint still bright from the previous Victory parade:
Join our convoy of ducks, dear comrades!
Become cans of worms prised open by fire-and-forget rockets,
But your mothers won\'t forget as they sign your dockets:
A special delivery from a military operation,
Neatly packaged as the Pride of a Nation.
Slav on Slav, like some cruel computer game seen from on high,
Played by godly drones that don\'t see the whites of an eye.
Red on Blue, Blue on Red:
A new crimson flag of the blood that was shed.
But in the autumn, when triumph reigns over the rubble;
the burnt bridges and the severed ties,
Let us ride through the New Asculum: and forget the lies.
Whilst in the Wild Fields, irrigated by a thousand mothers\' tears,
The reality is black plastic bags all lined up in rows
In the place where sunflowers used to grow.