Ukraine, oh Ukraine (Україна, о Україна)

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