I wrote these lines of love, my dear,

Before the cold days of the war.

When you were near, so near, my dear;

When I was close, so close, to here,

And no one knew what lay in store.

Now all these lines have chilled, my dear,

Though love remains, strong as before.

Now you are far, so far, my dear,

While I am shivering with fear;

And all we can expect is more.

...

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I think that the artist got it spot on.

This is man at his most basic:

Trapped in the eternal tunnel,

With no beginning, no end, no escape,

Vulnerable like never before.

The place is a shelter, of course,

But could easily be a slaughterhouse,

Fried in fat if the walls don’t hold.

Try to imagine the pitch dark.

Just how has humanity come to this?

Cowerin...

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The metal’s falling

From the sky, like rain.

A warped ambition

Terrifies Ukraine,

As someone, somewhere,

Swells up with disdain,

While his practised sneer

Dishes out the pain.

And the world knows well

That he won’t explain,

But that, sure as hell,

He’ll be back again.

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Twenty dead so far……..

I wonder if they get an extra mark

For killing kids or snuffing babies out?

On their twisted scale of staff incentives,

Perhaps their bonus swells at all such scalps;

Perhaps their backs are slapped at each week’s end.

They say that talks for peace are well on track,

But we see little sign of it round here.

We feel the foul, malignant breath of b...

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The odd small child has copped it,

A writer here, a pensioner,

And, just around the corner,

An engineer.

It’s the same old detritus of war;

Keep moving now,

There’s nothing to see,

Nothing to fear.

The single mum with stumps for legs

Has made somebody’s day,

Just like the school and hospital,

Each with rooves blown away.

More detritus, but life goes on...

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Civilians lie, annoyingly dead,

Innocent prey of the enemy’s sport,

While wannabe gods in Washington cry:

‘You losers! We told you. It's all your fault.’

Others in Ukraine, spared till now, await

A shabby, hardly necessary fate,

And wriggle in the web where they are caught.

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A cemetery, you may think, but

No bodies lie beneath, just roots;

No unattested arms remain,

No pairs of sweaty, unclaimed boots.

Quite soon there will be vines and grapes,

And then the succulence of wine;

No trace of blown-off body parts,

Detached by shell shot or by mine.

The volunteers who tend the place

Sense no souls planted underground;

They prune and ...

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There are no allies any more,

No friends, no foes,

No right, no wrong,

No good, no bad;

Just bully boys who'll take you

For everything you had.

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They no longer carry coins.

They have wads of notes to spare,

But their instinct is to throw crumbs,

Or bits of half-eaten sandwiches.

They tell you to perform

One of those cute local dances,

Or to sing ‘Streets of London’,

Or playing a tune on the violin.

Or better still, sit up and beg,

Say how goddam grateful you are,

And hand over anything you’ve got,

Explainin...

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The Sunshine Boys are chatting on the phone;

They claim that they are both concerned with peace.

But one of them is raining down his bombs,

While body counts on both sides still increase.

The other one appears not to remember

Who started this barbaric slice of hell;

He treats the culprit as a valued partner

And seems to have been captured by his spell.

The victims...

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A time will come when we forgive,

Though that time is not yet;

But even when forgiveness comes,

None of us will forget.

We won’t forget the agony,

The sadness and the waste;

We won’t forget the insults hurled

With puerile lack of taste.

We won’t forget our cities wrecked,

Our soldiers blown to bits;

We won’t forget the fearful nights,

The lethal missile h...

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In sleep I see the nail

Pass through the yielding flesh;

Jesus knew about that.

But we are skin and bone,

Already. No reserves

Of fat or of muscle.

Bare bones. No resistance.

Every strike and rumble

A nail, hammered, pinpoint,

Into the joints and cracks.

The torment forcing us

Towards strange submission.

Soon we could be up there,

On the cross, con...

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The moon shines up above:

New, crescent, half, gibbous, full,

Waxing, waning,

Dodging behind a scudding cloud.

Its complete repertory,

Its whole thing.

At least they’ll never get the moon.

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This used to be my street,

This used to be my home,

This used to be my land.

I do not understand

And cannot fathom why

Things got so out of hand,

So much has been destroyed,

So many had to die.

These simple-minded times

Have carved the perfect tool

To camouflage the truth

And take us for a fool.

It turns out that this war

Is no one’s fault at all.

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The fractured walls of wickedness in war

Are on display each day at any time.

The morning tittle tattles rise and fall

And poets churn out verses in sweet rhyme,

But somewhere, here or not so far away,

A child is killed by missiles from above,

A mother grieves for her departed son

And husbands weep for what they think was love,

While no one makes the evil men account

For...

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You don’t need much brains to share a tweet

(Tech Bros will help you if you can’t).

Just flash up vile messages on your screen

And give them a big MAGA slant.

Insult a battered country and its chief,

Say that his time is almost up,

And inform him that all future funding

Will be dropped in a paper cup.

Here’s what the tweet said, in more precise terms:

Ukraine’s...

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Never mind the wounded,

Never mind the dead;

Shake hands with the cheeky chap

And pat his shiny head.

Never mind the blood

That’s dripping from his hands;

Kneel right down and grovel

In front of where he stands.

The cheeky chap is on a roll;

The BRICs are dancing to his tune.

A warrant waits for his arrest,

But might as well be on the moon:

For t...

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At every corner of the world I turn,

I come across the stink and shape of death

And dodge the battered buildings to keep safe.

Yet still I hear the noisy men of war

Talk euphemistically of grades and gain,

Assuring us that all they want is peace.

Sad to relate, that treasured bird has flown;

From this time on, our God is on his own.

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In the language of communiqués, we say:

‘We will do whatever it takes’,

But in Kyiv, Kharkiv or Kramatorsk,

As nighttime falls and warheads once again

Wend their way between wide-open cracks,

The heart of one more mother breaks.

And our reply? ‘Look at the big picture;

This sort of thing is anecdotal.

A tiny fraction of the total.’

Pah!

From inside each plus...

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What are we fighting for?

Ukraine will win this war.

By gambit or caprice,

Ukraine will live in peace.

Though enemies have tried

To dent a nation’s pride,

Their onslaught is defied.

Ukraine will win this war.

Though cities crash and burn,

The displaced will return,

And conflict will adjourn.

Ukraine will live in peace.

For freedom will prevail

...

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Maybe my enemy enjoys a joke,

When seated round a table with his mates.

I can believe that he’s a decent bloke,

Except when the demand of war dictates.

Perhaps he likes his football at weekends;

His mother might still bring his cup of tea.

Yet now it’s captured land that he defends,

And if he’s ordered he will shoot at me.

Our paths may well have crossed when we w...

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I took one in the back,

And fell down on the ground.

I sought a friendly face,

And saw one that I knew,

Approaching me at pace:

A pal from student days,

Now on the other side.

‘I’m not to blame,’ he says,

And shoots, in the same place.

‘It’s business, it’s not you.’

His words seemed quite profound,

(I don't think I replied)

Yet they took me aback,

As I lay th...

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We feel bad about our provocation;

We didn’t mean to cause you such upset.

Of course, you are innocent and blameless;

Our troops were only sent in for a bet.

Our little strategic incursion

Was even-handed and sincerely meant.

There was no wish to violate your borders;

No malice was contained in our intent.

Wait a second, though! At provocation,

You’ve shown you...

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It’s never going to work;

You do deals with the tough,

But soon he’ll cut up rough

And do his dirty stuff.

He just can’t get enough.

He’s never satisfied

Until your flame has died,

Snuffed out by his dark side.

By then his grin’s as wide

As some cream-licking cat.

Though preaching peace and that,

His word is worthless tat;

He’ll rase your homeland...

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He waddled his way to the Kremlin

As some kind of honest broker,

But anyone watching the horror show

Viewed him as one sick joker.

With his huff-puff of lies and flannel,

He claimed that he came in peace;

If only Kyiv would listen,

The bloody destruction would cease.

Then just a few days later,

Ukraine suffered thirty-plus dead;

Idiots can sometimes be usefu...

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Some people say home’s where the heart is found;

I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the being there,

The rooted opposite of somewhere else.

Fond memories may have tipped the scales

In favour of this slow, contented place:

The local shops, the chatter’s usual sound,

The morning stroll to coffee on the square,

The precious banality of passers-by,

Though each slab of this ecosphere wi...

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‘Look at the big picture,’

Cried the man in the suit.

So I took his advice

And ignored the sniper,

The stiff, the nightly raid,

The trivia of grief.

I turned to the summit,

Its polished chandeliers,

Its underarm hygiene,

Its on-tap refreshment,

(‘Still or sparkling, Madam?),

While, in the dregs of war,

The uninvited crouch

And hope the shells will miss.

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I remember the old dictum

About having to break some eggs,

But don’t recall the guided bombs,

Great cities beaten to a pulp,

Or blowing off somebody’s legs.

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A magnet hung in the big, bright store,

Between the household and the sport,

When down came a pair of guided bombs

And more innocent lives were cut short.

Far away across the border,

Pampered strategists play chess;

They do not know the victims,

And are bothered even less.

This is the new reality

Of war devoid of shame,

Where women, men and children

Becom...

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The naughty little boy:

He likes to roam around,

Invading foreign ground.

Harsh methods he’ll employ,

The naughty little boy:

He measures out the soil

That he intends to spoil

Or preferably destroy,

The naughty little boy:

A foe who stands alone

Is butchered by a drone:

His brand-new, shiny toy,

The naughty little boy:

No opposition views

Are broadcast on ...

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We have become defined by war.

Two years ago, we had the love.

Builders played and danced to our tune,

This fantasy world embraced us:

Plucky sorts, hung out for applause.

Now we are just part of the kitsch.

Since that time – more dead, injured and burned,

But not only that. Deeper marks

Have eaten into Free Ukraine:

The tears of a vanished childhood,

The shame of shr...

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There’s the old smoothie, turning on the charm.

Hunched behind his desk, far away from harm.

He doesn’t seem to care or give a toss

About the lives that he condemns to loss.

There’s the old smoothie, targeting Ukraine.

Oblivious to death, amused by pain,

He knows the masses have nowhere to hide

And are fair game if they live on that side.

There’s the old smoothie,...

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Are we allowed to be afraid?

Is it compulsory to fight?

Many would choose to be elsewhere

When faced with a foe and its might.

Are we a traitor if we leave,

Or a patriot if we stay?

It is no shame to show contempt

For warfare, and to keep away.

And ‘pacifist’, that grubby word

That hardly dares to speak its name?

Why should we join the ranks of hate

Or pl...

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It’s clever how they’ve set this up:

A bowl of fruit,

A jar,

A china dog,

An iron bar (an iron bar?)

Behind – some crumpled remains,

The stench of rotting heaps

Of defenceless women and men.

Still, no one can see or smell this,

So that’s all right then.

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He won’t give a penny to help Ukraine;

He won’t lift a finger or part with change.

He wants his America ‘great again’

And thinks that such places are foreign and strange.

He won’t give a penny to help Ukraine;

He prefers to do favours for his mates:

Like jailbirds whose crimes are far from mundane,

And heads of authoritarian states.

He won’t give a penny to help U...

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Two years ago, we had no words,

Because words seemed superfluous.

Branded upon our consciousness,

All we needed was the image:

Each scorched mark would remind us

Of newly discovered horror.

But, in the end, the words returned;

Our memories demanded them.

A less reliable record,

Yet devastating for all that:

Shifting, changing, containing tears

As well as anger. Tha...

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They have made a mess of the house next door;

Mum, Dad, two kids and a cat are no more.

Can someone explain what they do this for?

Who knows? They just don’t like us, I suppose.

In years gone by, it was never like this;

We greeted, with a handshake or a kiss,

Our nearby friends. How has it gone amiss?

Who knows? They just don’t like us, I suppose.

It looks as thou...

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As you may have seen on the News and Features page, I have compiled a selection of fifty poems to mark the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Some of these poems will be familiar to regular contributors, but a number have not yet featured on the WOL blog.

This is a private print and not available for general sale, but I would be pleased to send a free PDF copy by e-mail to anyb...

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Time, or what passes for time,

Is a culprit, most unkind,

Stealing what we find,

Emptying our mind.

Time should be the music

Which everybody plays,

Adding to our days

In unexpected ways.

But time is made of windows,

Shattered one by one in hate,

A commentary upon this state,

Where rescue parties come too late.

Time is the gun, time is the shell,

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‘Time passes,’ said the man at our table.

‘People want something new.’ I guess he’s right.

It's the prevailing theory round here.

‘The same old faces,’ opined another;

‘You know, Zelensky. Always wants money.’

And ‘here’ is anywhere, maybe everywhere.

Time passes. All of us know that feeling:

You turn a new page in a calendar

Or put away Christmas decorations.

At cricket...

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A morning to freeze the spirits.

As they shiver in hollowed times,
Workers stamp and spit used breath.

At the corner I see two men:

Their eyes wet from today’s bad news.

‘You can always tell,’ says my guide;

'They both had sons where it happened.'

I try to do an interview:

Get short shrift. Understandably.

As we leave, one of them calls out:

‘Poetry is dead. Art is dead...

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We queued at the supermarket;

I saw that everyone was dead.

And yet they were still standing.

Out of defiance? Contempt?

Perhaps just out of habit.

We queued at the bakery,

And in the rows of cakes

We saw the faces of the fallen:

Unmoved, at last at peace.

We queued at the bus stop.

A passer-by called out to us

And we called back,

But no one was alive

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The war’s cold exclusion has stripped out love.

Two years on, I stroll among the Bruegels;

The pictures dazzle in their joyless way,

Reflecting life’s treadmill of chores, horrors,

Its accommodations and its intrigues,

Its little stratagems for making do,

Not forgetting massacres and revenge.

I’ve read about the gas used at the front

To flush out choking soldiers marked for...

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You can spot the signs:

They talk of ‘hard-earned cash’,

And ‘putting our people first.’

We know what’s coming next:

‘Yes, the invasion was wrong,

But do we really….?’

Or, ‘why can’t they get together

And sort the whole thing out?’

Fatuous bewilderment

Is hardly an excuse.

It is so damned easy to say:

‘We expected some light

At the end of the tunnel’

When you...

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It’s not surprising there is some fatigue;

Far away lands of which we know not much

Soon regress once the novelty wears off

And the front page headlines have moved elsewhere.

There was that time, of course; Ukraine became

Everyone’s second-favourite country.

Top people swaggered in yellow and blue

And excited queues welcomed the displaced.

It couldn’t last. The ha...

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Why do they try to murder Ukraine?

Why do they turn their hatred on us?

Why do they dump their anger again

And then feign surprise at all the fuss?

Why do they slaughter the best of our youth

And try to efface all the signs of our past,

Pretending to be the masters of truth,

Denying their part in each deadly blast?

Why do they wish to hollow us out

Why do they ...

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The bare facts: they killed six and wounded seventeen

When a coward's rockets destroyed the Kharkiv Post.

Another crime to add to the burgeoning list.

I got used to loss at the Post when very young;

Christmas 70: my first job when still at school.

We started together, a young student and I.

Later that day, her bike was crushed by a lorry.

I was working the vans; everyone rushe...

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It’s a tough old job,

Lugging around the body bags.

I sweat and nearly stumble

Over the packed rows of stiffs.

I think I’ll change;

Get something in an office.

There’ll be a nice comfy chair,

And morning coffee

With a tasty slice of pie.

If you can be fatigued,

So can I.

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Get out there and win the war, you slackers!

You’ve had tons of weapons from your backers.

They’re no excuse: defences, mines and tanks;

You’ve all you need to break enemy ranks.

Casualties? That’s just collateral stuff;

You mean you don’t know that war will be rough?

You know what they say: you can’t take the heat?

Vacate the kitchen and stare at defeat.

We’ve stumped up t...

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Last night, I met somebody from Ukraine;

He told me Mykolaiv was his town.

‘Oh, I’ve heard of it,’ I said. ‘In the East.’

‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘Near Odesa.’

Embarrassed, I had to apologise:

‘I got it confused with Mariupol.’

Although, of course, I realised my gaffe,

This exchange exposed the danger of war

As big-headlines and the superficial:

‘Starts with M, four sy...

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