Once-upon-a-time friends shout
Fascists in the Maidan,
US imperialism,
NATO encroachment,
De-nazify Ukraine,
and Ukraine is not a real nation.
My friends respond,
The right of self-determination,
Russian imperialism,
The right to armed self-defense.
But I think of Pasha driving medical supplies
in the bombs’ eerie light,
after Olia and their baby
fled to France.
and Peter’s son Grisha carried from St. Petersburg
when his father fled the Russian draft.
and Liuda’s childhood Mariupol
where Russian stormtroopers roam
through bomb-blasted homes
like wolves seeking prey.
Do Odesa’s Bazarna Street
and its gray-furred cat
yet survive?
Are Eisenstein’s Potemkin Steps
so many shattered stones
decorated with scraps
from fallen baby carriages
and red-splattered bones?
And here in New Jersey I wonder daily:
Have the parks where I often wrote poems
been cratered yet?
