Poetry

To the Ukrainian Ambassador

1

They do not care one bit for you people;

Your country’s just a little part of Russia.

They just want all the Russias to be feeble.

They’re watching from afar and taking pleasure.

2

Now, 'they' are those who, when Germans and French

Got stuck in war a hundred years ago,

Joined in that game and set up their own trench,

To slog it out to death there, toe to toe.

3

Quarrelling brothers mixed it up so much

It was a premature apocalypse.

They shed all sense while they were shedding blood.

Before that war, they sent their battleships

4

Great grey slow convoys moving round the Earth,

To bring wealth home, wealth due to them by right;

A serious people of unquestioned worth,

Who hammered out ideas in debate.

5

But those men, they all died and had no sons,

After the Somme and Ypres, which no side won.

The wealth, the power, and all the Christians,

The honest, strong and Christian men are gone.

6

There would have been no shame in giving up

Before 1916. And you, likewise,

Should by your own choice cause your war to stop.

'They' want to see you pushing up daisies.

7

If Britain’s Parliament cared for Ukraine,

It would not ship more toxic lethal aid.

Rather, our ministers, by now had been

In Moscow, sorry for mistakes they’ve made.

8

I’m not concerned to talk of what’s been done.

Rather, I want you to sit down to talk

With Putin, him who made Ukraine a waste.

Only a saint could talk and make it work.

9

Don’t leave the peace talks to the atheists

An unforgiving murderous envious

And greedy view of life is in their hearts.

Such men hate peace; they’ll be the end of us.

10

Forgive the Russian statesmen for the war.

Trust them. There will be no loss doing that.

Recall, we do not care for you, rather

We want the Slavs to wipe each other out.

11

Once, famously, a census taker asked

Some Slavs their nation, and their politics.

Most said: “Our nation’s leader is our priest;

Our nationality is Orthodox”.

12

Don’t say you fight for democratic rule.

Democracy is what you’re fighting for?

Is it believed the people have control

In Britain? It’s not so, you can be sure.

13

The legal status of our people here

Is that we’re innocent before the State;

But our elite don’t want this anymore!

Britain’s authoritarian of late.

14

Do you believe, as propaganda says,

That Putin wants the USSR back?

These are just Blairite claims and Johnson lies,

Like Double-U MDs inside Iraq.

15

They say that Russia’s weak fighting on land,

When they have seen Ukraine counter attack;

But it is clear, both sides are of one kind.

Could Western armies thus break Russia’s back?

16

Make peace. The West is not a friend of yours,

And nothing good survives these civil wars.