Ukraine, oh Ukraine (Україна, о Україна)
My great grandmother’s nativity Born intact and un-severed Within your ungrudging borders A century past now, Her wander-lust gypsy free family Never knew any purposeful brutality The many horrors, atrocities. And whole family fatalities Cannot be fully assimilated into any humane reality
The attempts to once again diminish and extinguish, The Ukrainian people. unless they relinquish Their history, autonomy and sovereignty is barbarity armed with immorality and depraved insanity
The virtue and substance of long-coveted resources Bombed and burned to char will give no return
Ruthless marauders, those covetous. with greed and envy, Wanting to carry stolen value out on the backs of the weary tears of many like packhorses,Instead lifted them up on proud war horses
Ukraine Oh Ukraine (Україна, о Україна
I never knew my foremother
Or her Ukrainian motherland
Now both call to me clearly
Yet it’s not ancestry’s voice
That speaks loudly with history’s hand
It’s the cries of the war weary
Whose language I understand
All that was created
In joy turned sharply into pain
Now destroyed and displaced
Ukraine oh Ukraine (Україна, о Україна)
You have lost much
Grief and death
So vast and far removed
From humane belief and trust
One can never fully touch
Or behold what has aggrieved
The welcoming habitat
And flourishing heart of this nation,
With blood, brow, and sinew
Still beating un-combatively true
Her people cannot be replaced
But by Will alone, they will be relieved
Unconquerably strong without retreat
They will not capitulate or hesitate
To control their own fate
Neither leave their homeland in defeat
Nor sacrifice the face of humanity in war
Ukraine oh Ukraine Україна, о Україна)
Familial roots and posterity
Re-echo our shared inheritance
Your heraldry a badge of honor
A mark of distinction
That breathes still
I feel your pull
For full liberty, community
And civilized duty
Deep within your soul
Carved rings of ancestral memory
Resonate in my core as legacy
Lighting again striking this tree
Scarred boughs and lost branches
Add much to its growth and maturity
Ukraine oh Ukraine Україна, о Україна)
Your tears water the arid landscape. within us all
What seeds for our children
will we now sow?
Some have breathed their last so peace could grow
When we find solace and common ground in our collective frail familiarity and mortality We can then be the secret garden found Sprouting only healthy seedlings of humanity. That germinates hope and mutual community Never weeding out any cultural diversity
Ukraine Oh Ukraine Україна, о Україна)
Flowering in remembrance of those gone from us
Of life’s sweet innocence lost
And to remind us of its devastating cost
When apathetic inaction dies without aid
Or conscience filled reaction is waylaid
Allowing another faction’s deadly bolt action
To replace a democratic state of grace
Too soon love and kindred kindness are erased
That is the price paid-MLH