Change of Heart - April 26 2022

 

Change of Heart

April 26 2022

The cruellest thing

was not that they were shot

in the back of the head

with their hands tied.

Or buried

beneath a couple feet of earth,

shallow enough

to be scavenged by wild animals.

Or even the words

of scorn and derision

that were the last things they heard.

It was digging their own graves,

all the while

hoping faintly

for rescue

intervention

a diametric change of heart.

How foolish, we think

looking back

and knowing what took place.

As if hope can ever be false.

As if we, too, would not find inconceivable

our own imminent death.

As if in our civilized world

genocide

was no longer possible,

that humanity had progressed

from the primitive state

of the 20th century

to this enlightened 21st.

The skunks were first

clawing at loose stony earth.

Emaciated foxes

gorged ravenously.

Vultures circled, and squabbled,

tearing at what remained.

A fresh snow fell,

and the killing field

was concealed in virgin white.

Which only lasted a while;

the heat

of decomposing bodies

turning it to mud.

I normally try not to express my despair, anger, and cynicism so openly in my poems. But after reading a few pieces by Anne Applebaum about Russia's war against Ukraine, and then a reference in a friend's correspondence about (I paraphrase) “digging their own graves, even if just for a few more minutes of life”, the floodgates opened.

In writing this I thought about the Nazis – before they came up with mass execution by poison gas – trying not to waste bullets by lining people up and killing two with one shot. It is so ironic -- if that isn't too mild a word – that Putin has chosen “Nazi” as his preferred way to dehumanize and demonize the Ukrainian people. Dictators seem blind to such ironies: that their ginned-up accusations of misbehaviour so perfectly reflect their own crimes. It's as if they can only see the world through their own limited prism of disordered human behaviour.