TRAGEDY - (AFTER 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL)

After watching Mstyslav Chernov’s harrowing documentary, “20 Days in Mariupol” the other night, I was disturbed by the images he projected into our hearts. Those images resonated the most in the besieged hospital scenes, as the doctors and nurses attempted to save the lives of a toddler (aged 18 months) and a teenager (c16 years of age). That resonance came so strongly to me, because I thought of my own children and grandchildren.

And then? …and then they failed to save those young lives. I was shaken to the core, seeing the overstepping of an illegitimate State’s power, of a tyrant who creates nothing but victims, in seeking to be the victor.

Surely, enough is enough. Victors only create victims and there is no glory in that.

The only way I could put words to this tragedy, was through poetry and this is where ‘Tragedy’ was born - in the jaws of death.

Tragedy – (After 20 Days in Mariupol)

I’m waiting for tragedy’s stare

to catch my eye.

I’m waiting for remorse to knock

on my door,

and announce that the people I love

will be snatched away.

Leaving me with no one to hold,

no lips to kiss

no beautiful eyes to mirror

the love they see in me.

For we cannot hold emptiness

in our hearts, in our arms.

There is no fond caress, only

the coldness of grief.

I am not the only one to see that

stare, to hear the knock on the family’s

door, that was so used to the heartbeat

knocking of little ones, excited by

spending time, together, with the “old man”.

Who knew that time was at a premium

and that we had so little of it?

Who knew that tragedy and remorse

work the hands of tyrant-puppets,

who mistake it for power and

not their own sad emptiness.

Would that they would all fall

into the chasm named oblivion –

cold and heartless, just like them.

May the second death be reserved for them.

As for me, I have a longing to kiss

your sweet eyelids goodnight, once again.

And, see your lips smile in the light of love.

But,

Fill.

Me.

Fill me.

Fill-me!

With the love of ones once loved,

before they were memories.

Geoff Hall

#20daysinmariupol

#mstyslavchernov

#freeukraine