The image, in Bucha,
of the dead man’s hands
bound behind him, is all
we need to know of barbarism,
the nails of his fingers
as gray as the gunmetal sky,
under which he was murdered.
To deepen the offense
Russian aggressors accuse
the Ukrainians of being the Nazis,
rubbing the proverbial salt
into the wounds of their victims,
obfuscating the truth with lies
as they try to wipe their hands
of the genocidal blood.
In Bucha, we see this man’s hands
bound behind him in a mass grave,
among his neighbors,
among those whose hands
are also bound, some raped,
executed, slaughtered
as one Russian intellectual
advocated: to clean Ukraine,
to make pure again, —
which makes for a totalitarian motto
for the new Nazism rearing
its depraved head
from its pseudo-proletarian czar,
Vladimir Putin, the embodiment
of evil, scourge walking
the face of the earth,
making this a war between
what is corrupt and what is noble,
exemplified in
the manacled hands.
