Night in the Ukraine

This darkness grew from greed to grab the land
from branding brothers lesser than the mud
that clings to boots; when falling bombs seem planned
to murder toddlers, women and let blood
be spilled on cobblestones when every thud
may be the fated rocket, the final shell
that will rip your torso from your head
and end the life that war had turned to hell.
if though your fate is life how can you stand
beside your graves, forgive and shake their hands?

Night in the Ukraine
Ivan Aivazovsky

Today Laura asks us to write 10 line poems in iambic pentameter at dVerse. I have always called a poem like this a sonnetina but she gives the name ‘the Decuain’,

March 10, 2022

18 responses to “Night in the Ukraine

  1. It’s really ripping the country, if not Europe, if not the whole world apart…I don’t think they will shake hands and forgive in a hurry.

  2. a salutory decuain/sonnetina and one that has been played across all the centuries.
    p.s. I am a novice with forms but I believe the sonnetina allwos different metric schemes as well as various ways of splitting the lines

  3. Your war poetry just gets sharper and sharper, cutting deeper, these words here are proof of the power of the word, The savage tragedy of it all is so evident here..

  4. Those who aim at women and children, there is a special brand of karma that attaches to them. Your poem is searing and may he feel the burn of it in his liver.

  5. This situation is too sad and too horrible not to look away — but we must not! Excellent piece Bjorn.

  6. So well written, Bjorn. I cant even form the word forgiveness in my brain. I can hardly believe what I am seeing, each day worse than the one before.

  7. I find it very hard to write about this–you manage it well, Bjorn. The situation is intolerable in so many ways, and the feeling of the deadly greed you mention slitting its own throat, and all of ours along with it, is overwhelming. Very fine and apt writing, and I wish it didn’t have to be done.

  8. Thank you for expressing so evocatively the inhumanity and ludicrousness of war. I saw a meme: “If the Russians stops fighting, the war ends; if the Ukrainians stop fighting, their homeland ends.”

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